THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


ARS  RECTE  VIVENDI 

BEING   ESSAYS    CONTRIBUTED   TO 
"THE  EASY  CHAIR" 


BY 

GEORGE  WILLIAM   CURTIS 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 

1898 


WILOA&  CURTIS. 


LITERARY  AND  SOCIAL  ESSAYS.    8vo,  $2  50. 
ORATIONS    AND  ADDRESSES.      Three  Volumes.      8vo, 

$3  50  each. 

FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  With  Portrait.  i6mo,  $i  oo. 
FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  Second  Series.  i6mo,  $i  oo. 
FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  Third  Series.  i6mo,  $i  oo. 
PRUE  AND  I.  Illustrated  Edition.  8vo,  $3  5°.  Also 

i2mo,  $i  50. 

LOTUS-EATING.     Illustrated.     i2mo,  $i  50. 
NILE  NOTES  OF  A  HOWADJI.     i2mo,  $i  50. 
THE  HOWADJI  IN  SYRIA.     i2mo,  $i  50. 
THE  POTIPHAR  PAPERS.     Illustrated.     i2mo,  $i  50. 
TRUMPS.     A  Novel.     Illustrated.     i2mo,  $i  50. 
JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL.     Illustrated.    32mo,  50  cents. 
WENDELL  PHILLIPS.     A  Eulogy.     8vo,  25  cents. 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON  : 
HARPER  &   BROTHERS,   PUBLISHERS. 


Copyright,  1897,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rights  reserved. 


At 


PREFACE 


THE  publication  of  this  collection  of 
Essays  was  suggested  by  some  remarks 
of  a  college  professor,  in  the  course  of 
which  he  said  that  about  a  dozen  of 
the  "  Easy  Chair  '!  Essays  in  HARPER'S 
MAGAZINE  so  nearly  cover  the  more 
vital  questions  of  hygiene,  courtesy, 
and  morality  that  they  might  be  gath 
ered  into  a  volume  entitled  "  Ars  Recte 
Vivendi,"  and  as  such  they  are  offered 
to  the  public. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

EXTRAVAGANCE  AT  COLLEGE i 

BRAINS  AND  BRAWN ir 

HAZING 2O 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  GENTLEMAN 30 

THEATRE  MANNERS 36 

WOMAN'S  DRESS 47 

SECRET  SOCIETIES 52 

TOBACCO  AND  HEALTH 65 

TOBACCO  AND  MANNERS 69 

DUELLING 85 

NEWSPAPER  ETHICS  .         93 


EXTRAVAGANCE  AT  COLLEGE 

YOUNG  Sardanapalus  recently  remark 
ed  that  the  only  trouble  with  his  life  in 
college  was  that  the  societies  and  clubs, 
the  boating  and  balling,  and  music  and 
acting,  and  social  occupations  of  many 
kinds,  left  him  no  time  for  study.  He 
had  the  best  disposition  to  treat  the 
faculty  fairly,  and  to  devote  a  proper  at 
tention  to  various  branches  of  learning, 
and  he  was  sincerely  sorry  that  his  other 
college  engagements  made  it  quite  im 
possible.  Before  coming  to  college  he 
thought  that  it  might  be  practicable  to 
mingle  a  little  Latin  and  Greek,  and 
possibly  a  touch  of  history  and  mathe 
matics,  with  the  more  pressing  duties 


2  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

of  college  life;  but  unless  you  could 
put  T£<2r-e  hojurs;  injt'p  fthe  day,  or  more 
days,  into  .tli e\  week/ 'he  really  did  not 
sefe*«lUfW  4t*  bouici  •  be'  -done. 

It  was  the  life  of  Sardanapalus  in 
college  which  was  the  text  of  some 
sober  speeches  at  Commencement  din 
ners  during  the  summer,  and  of  many 
excellent  articles  in  the  newspapers. 
They  all  expressed  a  feeling  which  has 
been  growing  very  rapidly  and  becom 
ing  very  strong  among  old  graduates, 
that  college  is  now  a  very  different 
place  from  the  college  which  they  re 
membered,  and  that  young  men  now 
spend  in  a  college  year  what  young 
men  in  college  formerly  thought  would 
be  a  very  handsome  sum  for  them  to 
spend  annually  when  they  were  estab 
lished  in  the  world.  If  any  reader 
should  chance  to  recall  a  little  book  of 
reminiscences  by  Dr.  Tomes,  which  was 


Extravagance  at  College  3 

published  a  few  years  ago,  he  will  have 
a  vivid  picture  of  the  life  of  forty  and 
more  years  ago  at  a  small  New  Eng 
land  college ;  and  the  similar  records 
of  other  colleges  at  that  time  show 
how  it  was  possible  for  a  poor  clergy 
man  starving  upon  a  meagre  salary  to 
send  son  after  son  to  college.  The  col 
legian  lived  in  a  plain  room,  and  upon 
very  plain  fare ;  he  had  no  "  extras,"  and 
the  decorative  expense  of  Sardanapalus 
was  unknown.  In  the  vacations  he 
taught  school  or  worked  upon  the  farm. 
He  knew  that  his  father  had  paid  by 
his  own  hard  work  for  every  dollar  that 
he  spent,  and  the  relaxation  of  the  sense 
of  the  duty  of  economy  which  always 
accompanies  great  riches  had  not  yet 
begun.  Sixty  years  ago  the  number 
of  Americans  who  did  not  feel  that 
they  must  live  by  their  own  labor 
was  so  small  that  it  was  not  a  class. 


4  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

But  there  is  now  a  class  of  rich  men's 
sons. 

The  average  rate  of  living  at  college 
differs.  One  of  the  newspapers,  in  dis 
cussing  the  question,  said  that  in  most 
of  the  New  England  colleges  a  steady 
and  sturdy  young  man  need  not  spend 
more  than  six  hundred  dollars  during 
the  four  years.  This  is  obviously  too 
low  an  estimate.  Another  thinks  that 
the  average  rate  at  Harvard  is  proba 
bly  from  six  hundred  to  ten  hundred  a 
year.  Another  computes  a  fair  liberal 
average  in  the  smaller  New  England 
colleges  to  be  from  twenty-four  to  twen 
ty-six  hundred  dollars  for  the  four  years, 
and  the  last  class  at  Williams  is  report 
ed  to  have  ranged  from  an  average  of 
six  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  in  the  first 
year  to  seven  hundred  and  twenty-eight 
dollars  in  the  Senior.  But  the  trouble 
lies  in  Sardanapalus.  The  mischief  that 


Extravagance  at  College  5 

he  does  is  quite  disproportioned  to  the 
number  of  him.  In  a  class  of  one  hun 
dred  the  number  of  rich  youth  may  be 
very  small.  But  a  college  class  is  an 
American  community  in  which  every 
member  is  necessarily  strongly  affected 
by  all  social  influences. 

A  few  "  fellows  "  living  in  princely  ex 
travagance  in  superbly  furnished  rooms, 
with  every  device  of  luxury,  entertain 
ing  profusely,  elected  into  all  the  de 
sirable  clubs  and  societies,  conforming 
to  another  taste  and  another  fashion 
than  that  of  the  college,  form  a  class 
which  is  separate  and  exclusive,  and 
which  looks  down  on  those  who  cannot 
enter  the  charmed  circle.  This  is  gall 
ing  to  the  pride  of  the  young  man  who 
cannot  compete.  The  sense  of  the  in 
equality  is  constantly  refreshed.  He 
may,  indeed,  attend  closely  to  his  stud 
ies.  He  may  "  scorn  delights,  and  live 


6  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

laborious  days."  He  may  hug  his  thread 
bare  coat  and  gloat  over  his  unrugged 
floor  as  the  fitting  circumstance  of 
"  plain  living  and  high  thinking."  It 
is  always  open  to  character  and  intel 
lect  to  perceive  and  to  assert  their  es 
sential  superiority.  Why  should  Soc 
rates  heed  Sardanapalus  ?  Why  in- 
deed  ?  But  the  average  young  man  at 
college  is  not  an  ascetic,  nor  a  devotee, 
nor  an  absorbed  student  unmindful  of 
cold  and  heat,  and  disdainful  of  ele 
gance  and  ease  and  the  nameless  magic 
of  social  accomplishment  and  grace. 
He  is  a  youth  peculiarly  susceptible  to 
the  very  influence  that  Sardanapalus 
typifies,  and  the  wise  parent  will  hesi 
tate  before  sending  his  son  to  Sybaris 
rather  than  to  Sparta. 

When  the  presence  of  Sardanapalus 
at  Harvard  was  criticised  as  dangerous 
and  lamentable,  the  President  prompt- 


Extravagance  at  College  7 

ly  denied  that  the  youth  abounded  at 
the  university,  or  that  his  influence  was 
wide-spread.  He  was  there  undoubted 
ly,  and  he  sometimes  misused  his  riches. 
But  he  had  not  established  a  standard, 
and  he  had  not  affected  the  life  of  the 
university,  whose  moral  character  could 
be  favorably  compared  with  that  of  any 
college.  But  even  if  the  case  were 
worse,  it  is  not  evident  that  a  remedy 
is  at  hand.  As  the  President  suggest 
ed,  there  are  two  kinds  of  rich  youth  at 
college.  There  are  the  sons  of  those 
who  have  been  always  accustomed  to 
riches,  and  who  are  generally  neither 
vulgar  nor  extravagant,  neither  osten 
tatious  nor  profuse ;  and  the  sons  of  the 
"  new  rich."  who  are  like  men  drunk 
with  new  wine,  and  who  act  accord 
ingly. 

The  "  new  rich  "  parent  will  naturally 
send  his  son  to  Harvard,  because  it  is 


8  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

the  oldest  of  our  colleges  and  of  great 
renown,  and  because  he  supposes  that 
through  his  college  associations  his  son 
may  pave  a  path  with  gold  into  "  socie 
ty."  Harvard,  on  her  part,  opens  her 
doors  upon  the  same  conditions  to  rich 
and  poor,  and  gives  her  instruction 
equally,  and  requires  only  obedience  to 
her  rules  of  order  and  discipline.  If 
Sardanapalus  fails  in  his  examination 
he  will  be  dropped,  and  that  he  is  Sar 
danapalus  will  not  save  him.  If  his  rev 
els  disturb  the  college  peace,  he  will 
be  warned  and  dismissed.  All  that  can 
be  asked  of  the  college  is  that  it  shall 
grant  no  grace  to  the  golden  youth  in 
the  hope  of  endowment  from  his  father, 
and  that  it  shall  keep  its  own  peace. 

This  last  condition  includes  more 
than  keeping  technical  order.  To  re 
move  for  cause  in  the  civil  service  really 
means  not  only  to  remove  for  a  penal 


Extravagance  at  College  9 

offence,  but  for  habits  and  methods 
that  destroy  discipline  and  efficiency. 
So  to  keep  the  peace  in  a  college 
means  to  remove  the  necessary  causes 
of  disturbance  and  disorder.  If  young 
Sardanapalus,  by  his  extravagance  and 
riotous  profusion  and  dissipation,  con 
stantly  thwarts  the  essential  purpose  of 
the  college,  demoralizing  the  students 
and  obstructing  the  peaceful  course  of 
its  instruction,  he  ought  to  be  dis 
missed.  The  college  must  judge  the 
conditions  under  which  its  work  may 
be  most  properly  and  efficiently  accom 
plished,  and  to  achieve  its  purpose  it 
may  justly  limit  the  liberty  of  its  stu 
dents. 

The  solution  of  the  difficulty  lies 
more  in  the  power  of  the  students  than 
of  the  college.  If  the  young  men  who 
are  the  natural  social  leaders  make  sim 
plicity  the  unwritten  law  of  college  so- 


io  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

cial  life,  young  Sardanapalus  will  spend 
his  money  and  heap  up  luxury  in  vain. 
The  simplicity  and  good  sense  of  wealth 
will  conquer  its  ostentation  and  reck 
less  waste. 

(October,  1886) 


BRAINS  AND   BRAWN 

IT  is  towards  the  end  of  June  and  in 
the  first  days  of  July  that  the  great  col 
lege  aquatic  contests  occur,  and  it  is 
about  that  time,  as  the  soldiers  at  Mon- 
mouth  knew  in  1778,  that  Sirius  is  lord 
of  the  ascendant.  This  year  it  was  the 
hottest  day  of  the  summer,  as  mark 
ed  by  the  mercury  in  New  York,  when 
the  Harvard  and  Yale  men  drew  out 
at  New  London  for  their  race.  Fifty 
years  ago  the  crowd  at  Commencement 
filled  the  town  green  and  streets,  and 
the  meeting-house  in  which  the  gradu 
ating  class  were  the  heroes  of  the  hour. 
The  valedictorian,  the  salutatorian,  the 
philosophical  orator,  walked  on  air,  and 


12  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

the  halo  of  after  -  triumphs  of  many 
kinds  was  not  brighter  or  more  intox 
icating  than  the  brief  glory  of  the  mo 
ment  on  which  they  took  the  gradu 
ating  stage,  under  the  beaming  eyes  of 
maiden  beauty  and  the  profound  ad 
miration  of  college  comrades. 

Willis,  as  Phil  Slingsby,  has  told  the 
story  of  that  college  life  fifty  and  sixty 
years  ago.  The  collegian  danced  and 
drove  and  flirted  and  dined  and  sang 
the  night  away.  Robert  Tomes  echoed 
the  strain  in  his  tale  of  college  life  a 
little  later,  under  stricter  social  and  ec 
clesiastical  conditions.  There  was  a 
more  serious  vein  also.  In  1827  the 
Kappa  Alpha  Society  was  the  first  of 
the  younger  brood  of  the  Greek  alphabet 
— descendants  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
of  1781 — and  in  1832  Father  Eells, 
as  he  is  affectionately  called,  founded 
Alpha  Delta  Phi,  a  brotherhood  based 


Brains  and  Brawn  13 

upon  other  aims  and  sympathies  than 
those  of  Mr.  Philip  Slingsby,  but  one 
which  appealed  instantly  to  clever  men 
in  college,  and  has  not  ceased  to  attract 
them  to  this  happy  hour,  as  the  Easy 
Chair  has  just  now  commemorated. 

But  neither  in  the  sketches  of  Slings 
by  nor  in  the  memories  of  those  Com 
mencement  triumphs  is  there  any  record 
of  an  absorbing  and  universal  and  over 
powering  enthusiasm  such  as  attends 
the  modern  college  boat-race.  The  race 
of  this  year  between  the  two  great  New 
England  universities,  Harvard  and  Yale 
—  the  Crimson  and  the  Blue — was  a 
twilight  contest,  for  "  high  water,"  says 
the  careful  chronicler,  "  did  not  occur 
until  seven  o'clock."  At  half -past  six 
he  describes  the  coming  of  the  grand 
armada  and  the  expectant  scene  in 
these  words  :  "  The  Block  Island  came 
down  from  Norwich  with  every  square 


14  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

foot  of  her  three  decks  occupied,  the 
Elm  City  brought  a  mass  of  Yale  sym 
pathizers  from  New  Haven,  and  the  big 
City  of  New  York  rilled  her  long  saloon- 
deck  with  New  London  spectators.  A 
special  train  of  eighteen  cars  came  up 
from  New  Haven,  a  blue  flag  fluttering 
from  every  window.  The  striking  con 
trast  to  the  life  and  bustle  of  the  lower 
end  of  the  course  was  the  quiet  river 
at  the  starting  -  point.  The  college 
launches,  the  huge  tug  America,  the 
press -boat  Manhasset,  loaded  with  cor 
respondents,  the  tug  Burnside,  swathed 
in  crimson  by  her  charter  party  of  Har 
vard  men,  and  the  steam-yacht  Norma, 
gay  with  party-colored  bunting,  floated 
idly  up-stream,  waiting  for  the  start. 
The  long  train  of  twenty-five  observa 
tion-cars  stood  quietly  by  the  river-side, 
its  occupants  closely  watching  the  boat- 
houses  across  the  river." 


Brains  and  Brawn  15 

Did  any  fleet  of  steamers  solid  with 
eager  spectators,  or  special  train  of 
eighteen  cars,  or  long  train  of  twenty- 
five  observation-cars,  a  vast,  enthusiastic 
multitude,  ever  arrive  at  any  college 
upon  any  Commencement  Day  in  Philip 
Slingsby's  time  to  greet  with  prolonged 
roars  of  cheers  and  frenzied  excitement 
the  surpassing  eloquence  of  Salutato- 
rian  Smith,  or  the  melting  pathos  of 
Valedictorian  Jones  ?  Did  ever — for  so 
we  read  in  the  veracious  history  of  a  day, 
the  newspaper — did  ever  a  college  town 
resound  with  "a  perfect  babel  of  noises" 
from  eight  in  the  summer  evening  until 
three  in  the  summer  morning,  the  town 
lighted  with  burning  tar-barrels  and  blaz 
ing  with  fireworks,  the  chimes  ringing, 
and  ten  thousand  people  hastening  to 
the  illuminated  station  to  receive  the 
victors  in  triumph — because  Brown  had 
vanquished  the  calculus,  or  Jones  discov- 


1 6  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

ered  a  comet,  or  Robinson  translated  the 
Daily  Gong  and  Gas  Blower  into  the 
purest  Choctaw?  In  a  word,  was  such 
tumult  of  acclamation — even  the  Pres 
ident  himself  swinging  his  reverend  hat, 
and  the  illustrious  alumni,  far  and  near, 
when  the  glad  tidings  were  told,  beam 
ing  with  joyful  complacency,  like  Mr. 
Pickwick  going  down  the  slide,  while 
Samivel  Weller  adjured  him  and  the 
company  to  keep  the  pot  a-bilin' — ever 
produced  by  any  scholastic  performance 
or  success  or  triumph  whatever  ? 

Echo  undoubtedly  answers  No;  and 
she  asks,  also,  whether  in  such  a  com 
petition,  when  the  appeal  is  to  youth, 
eager,  strong,  combative,  full  of  physical 
impulse  and  prowess,  in  the  time  of 
romantic  enjoyment  and  heroic  sus 
ceptibility,  study  is  not  heavily  han 
dicapped,  and  books  at  a  sorry  disad 
vantage  with  boats.  This  is  what  Echo 


Brains  and  Brawn  17 

distinctly  inquiries ;  and  what  answer 
shall  be  made  to  Echo  ?  Who  is  the 
real  hero  to  young  Slingsby,  who  has 
just  fitted  himself  to  enter  college — the 
victor  in  the  boat-race  or  the  noblest 
scholar  of  them  all?  The  answer  seems 
to  be  given  unconsciously  in  the  state 
ment  that  the  number  of  students  ap 
plying  for  entrance  is  notably  larger 
when  the  college  has  scored  an  athletic 
victory.  But  this  answer  is  not  wholly 
satisfactory.  There  may  be  an  observa 
ble  coincidence,  but  young  men  usually 
prepare  themselves  to  enter  a  particular 
college,  and  do  not  await  the  result  of 
boat-races. 

But  the  fact  remains  that  the  true 
college  hero  of  to-day  is  the  victor  in 
games  and  sports,  not  in  studies ;  and 
it  is  not  unnatural  that  it  should  be  so. 
It  is  partly  a  reaction  of  feeling  against 
the  old  notion  that  a  scholar  is  an  in- 


1 8  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

valid,  and  that  a  boy  must  be  down  in 
his  muscle  because  he  is  up  in  his  math 
ematics.  But,  as  Lincoln  said  in  his 
debate  with  Douglas,  it  does  not  fol 
low,  because  I  think  that  innocent  men 
should  have  equal  rights,  that  I  wish  my 
daughter  to  marry  a  negro.  It  does  not 
follow,  because  the  sound  mind  should 
be  lodged  in  a  sound  body,  that  the  care 
of  the  body  should  become  the  main, 
and  virtually  the  exclusive,  interest. 

Yet  that  this  is  now  somewhat  the 
prevailing  tendency  of  average  feeling 
is  undeniable,  and  it  is  a  tendency  to 
be  considered  by  intelligent  collegians 
themselves.  For  the  true  academic 
prizes  are  spiritual,  not  material ;  and 
the  heroes  for  college  emulation  are 
not  the  gladiators,  but  the  sages  and 
poets  of  the  ancient  day  and  of  all  time. 
The  men  that  the  college  remembers 
and  cherishes  are  not  ball-players,  and 


Brains  and  Brawn  19 

boat-racers,  and  high-jumpers,  and  box 
ers,  and  fencers,  and  heroes  of  single 
stick,  good  fellows  as  they  are,  but  the 
patriots  and  scholars  and  poets  and  ora 
tors  and  philosophers.  Three  cheers  for 
brawn,  but  three  times  three  for  brain ! 

(September,  1887) 


HAZING 

As  if  a  bell  had  rung,  and  the  venera 
ble  dormitories  and  halls  upon  the  green 
were  pouring  forth  a  crowd  of  youth  loi 
tering  towards  the  recitation -room,  the 
Easy  Chair,  like  a  college  professor, 
meditating  serious  themes,  and  with  a 
grave  purpose,  steps  to  the  lecture-desk. 
It  begins  by  asking  the  young  gentle 
men  who  have  loitered  into  the  room, 
and  are  now  seated,  what  they  think 
of  bullying  boys  and  hunting  cats  and 
tying  kettles  to  a  dog's  tail,  and  seat 
ing  a  comrade  upon  tacks  with  the 
point  upward.  Undoubtedly  they  reply, 
with  dignified  nonchalance,  that  it  is 
all  child's  play  and  contemptible.  Un- 


Hazing  21 

doubtedly,  young  gentlemen,  answers 
the  professor,  and,  to  multiply  Na 
than's  remark  to  David,  You  are  the 
men  ! 

As  American  youth  you  cherish 
wrathful  scorn  for  the  English  boy  who 
makes  another  boy  his  fag,  and  you  ex 
press  a  sneering  pity  for  the  boy  who 
consents  to  fag.  You  have  read  Dr. 
Birch  and  His  Young  Friends,  and  you 
would  like  to  break  the  head  of  Master 
Hewlett,  who  shies  his  shoe  at  the  poor 
shivering,  craven  Nightingale,  and  you 
justly  remark  that  close  observation  of 
John  Bull  seems  to  warrant  the  conclu 
sion  that  the  nature  of  his  bovine  an 
cestor  is  still  far  from  eliminated  from 
his  descendant  And  what  is  the  secret 
of  your  feeling  ?  Simply  that  you  hate 
bullying.  Why,  then,  young  gentlemen, 
do  you  bully? 

You  retort  perhaps   that  fagging  is 


22  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

unknown  in  America,  and  that  high- 
spirited  youth  would  not  tolerate  it. 
But  permit  the  professor  to  tell  you 
what  is  not  unknown  in  America:  a 
crowd  of  older  young  gentlemen  sur 
rounding  one  younger  fellow,  forcing 
him  to  do  disagreeable  and  disgusting 
things,  pouring  cold  water  down  his 
back,  making  a  fool  of  him  to  his  per 
sonal  injury,  he  being  solitary,  helpless, 
and  abused — all  this  is  not  unknown  in 
America,  young  gentlemen.  But  it  is 
all  very  different  from  what  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  consider  American. 
If  we  would  morally  define  or  para 
phrase  the  word  America,  I  think  we 
should  say  fair- play.  That  is  what  it 
means.  That  is  what  the  Brownist 
Puritans,  the  precursors  of  the  Plymouth 
Pilgrims,  left  England  to  secure.  They 
did  not  bring  it  indeed,  at  least  in  all  its 
fulness,  across  the  sea.  Let  us  say, young 


Hazing  23 

gentlemen,  that  its  potentiality,  its  possi 
bility,  rather  than  its  actuality,  stepped 
out  of  the  Mayflower  upon  Plymouth 
Rock.  But  from  the  moment  of  its 
landing  it  has  been  asserting  itself.  You 
need  not  say  "Baptist"  and  "Quaker." 
I  understand  it  and  allow  for  it  all.  But 
fair -play  has  prevailed  over  ecclesias 
tical  hatred  and  over  personal  slavery, 
and  what  are  called  the  new  questions — 
corporate  power,  monopoly,  capital,  and 
labor — are  only  new  forms  of  the  old 
effort  to  secure  fair-play. 

Now  the  petty  bullying  of  hazing  and 
the  whole  system  of  college  tyranny  is 
a  most  contemptible  denial  of  fair-play. 
It  is  a  disgrace  to  the  American  name, 
and  when  you  stop  in  the  wretched  busi 
ness  to  sneer  at  English  fagging  you 
merely  advertise  the  beam  in  your  own 
eyes.  It  is  not  possible,  surely,  that  any 
honorable  young  gentleman  now  attend- 


24  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

ing  to  the  lecture  of  the  professor  really 
supposes  that  there  is  any  fun  or  humor 
or  joke  in  this  form  of  college  bullying. 
Turn  to  your  Evelina  and  see  what  was 
accounted  humorous,  what  passed  for 
practical  joking,  in  Miss  Burney's  time, 
at  the  end  of  the  last  century.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  imagine  Dr.  Johnson,  who 
greatly  delighted  in  Evelina,  supposing 
the  intentional  upsetting  into  the  ditch 
of  the  old  French  lady  in  the  carriage 
to  be  a  joke.  For  a  man  who  uncon 
sciously  has  made  so  much  fun  for 
others  as  "  the  great  lexicographer,"  Dr. 
Johnson  seems  to  have  been  curiously 
devoid  of  a  sense  of  humor.  But  he 
was  a  genuine  Englishman  of  his  time, 
a  true  John  Bull,  and  the  fun  of  the 
John  Bull  of  that  time,  recorded  in 
the  novels  and  traditions,  was  entirely 
bovine. 

The  bovine  or  brutal  quality  is  by  no 


Hazing  25 

means  wholly  worked  out  of  the  blood 
even  yet.  The  taste  for  pugilism,  or 
the  pummelling  of  the  human  frame 
into  a  jelly  by  the  force,  of  fisticuffs,  as 
a  form  of  enjoyment  or  entertainment,  is 
a  relapse  into  barbarism.  It  is  the  in 
stinct  of  the  tiger  still  surviving  in  the 
white  cat  transformed  into  the  princess. 
I  will  not  call  it,  young  gentlemen,  the 
fond  return  of  Melusina  to  the  gambols 
of  the  mermaid,  or  Undine's  momentary 
unconsciousness  of  a  soul,  because  these 
are  poetic  and  pathetic  suggestions. 
The  prize -ring  is  disgusting  and  in 
human,  but  at  least  it  is  a  voluntary  en 
counter  of  two  individuals.  But  college 
bullying  is  unredeemed  brutality.  It  is 
the  extinction  of  Dr.  Jekyll  in  Mr.  Hyde. 
It  is  not  humorous,  nor  manly,  nor  gen 
erous,  nor  decent.  It  is  bald  and  vul 
gar  cruelty,  and  no  class  in  college 
should  feel  itself  worthy  of  the  respect 


26  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

of  others,  or  respect  itself,  until  it  has 
searched  out  all  offenders  of  this  kind 
who  disgrace  it,  and  banished  them  to 
the  remotest  Coventry. 

The  meanest  and  most  cowardly  fel 
lows  in  college  may  shine  most  in  haz 
ing.  The  generous  and  manly  men 
despise  it.  There  are  noble  and  inspir 
ing  ways  for  working  off  the  high  spirits 
of  youth  :  games  which  are  rich  in  poetic 
tradition;  athletic  exercises  which  mould 
the  young  Apollo.  To  drive  a  young 
fellow  upon  the  thin  ice,  through  which 
he  breaks,  and  by  the  icy  submersion 
becomes  at  last  a  cripple,  helpless  with 
inflammatory  rheumatism — surely  no 
young  man  in  his  senses  thinks  this  to 
be  funny,  or  anything  but  an  unspeaka 
ble  outrage.  Or  to  overwhelm  with 
terror  a  comrade  of  sensitive  tempera 
ment  until  his  mind  reels  —  imps  of 
Satan  might  delight  in  such  a  revel, 


Hazing  27 

but  young  Americans ! — never,   young 
gentlemen,  never ! 

The  hazers  in  college  are  the  men 
who  have  been  bred  upon  dime  novels 
and  the  prize-ring — in  spirit,  at  least,  if 
not  in  fact — to  whom  the  training  and 
instincts  of  the  gentleman  are  unknown. 
That  word  is  one  of  the  most  precious 
among  English  words.  The  man  who  is 
justly  entitled  to  it  wears  a  diamond  of 
the  purest  lustre.  Tennyson,  in  sweep 
ing  the  whole  range  of  tender  praise 
for  his  dead  friend  Arthur  Hallam,  says 
that  he  bore  without  abuse  the  grand  old 
name  of  gentleman.  "  Without  abuse  " 
— that  is  the  wise  qualification.  The 
name  may  be  foully  abused.  I  read  in 
the  morning's  paper,  young  gentlemen,  a 
pitiful  story  of  a  woman  trying  to  throw 
herself  from  the  bridge.  You  may  re 
call  one  like  it  in  Hood's  "  Bridge  of 
Sighs."  The  report  was  headed :  "  To 


28  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

hide  her  shame."  "Her  shame?"  Why, 
gentlemen,  at  that  very  moment,  in 
bright  and  bewildering  rooms,  the  arms 
of  Lothario  and  Lovelace  were  encir 
cling  your  sisters'  waists  in  the  intoxi 
cating  waltz.  These  men  go  unwhipped 
of  an  epithet.  They  are  even  enticed 
and  flattered  by  the  mothers  of  the  girls. 
But,  for  all  that,  they  do  not  bear  with 
out  abuse  the  name  of  gentleman,  and 
Sidney  and  Bayard  and  Hallam  would 
scorn  their  profanation  and  betrayal  of 
the  name. 

The  soul  of  the  gentleman,  what  is  it? 
Is  it  anything  but  kindly  and  thoughtful 
respect  for  others,  helping  the  helpless, 
succoring  the  needy,  befriending  the 
friendless  and  forlorn,  doing  justice,  re 
quiring  fair-play,  and  withstanding  with 
every  honorable  means  the  bully  of  the 
church  and  caucus,  of  the  drawing-room, 
the  street,  the  college  ?  Respect,  young 


Hazing  29 

gentlemen,  like  charity,  begins  at  home. 
Only  the  man  who  respects  himself  can 
be  a  gentleman,  and  no  gentleman  will 
willingly  annoy,  torment,  or  injure  an 
other. 

There  will  be  no  further  recitation  to 
day.     The  class  is  dismissed. 

(March,  1888) 


THE   SOUL   OF  THE   GENTLEMAN 

To  find  a  satisfactory  definition  of 
gentleman  is  as  difficult  as  to  discover 
the  philosopher's  stone ;  and  yet  if  we 
may  not  say  just  what  a  gentleman  is, 
we  can  certainly  say  what  he  is  not. 
We  may  affirm  indisputably  that  a  man, 
however  rich,  and  of  however  fine  a 
title  in  countries  where  rank  is  acknowl 
edged,  if  he  behave  selfishly,  coarsely, 
and  indecently,  is  not  a  gentleman. 
"  From  which,  young  gentlemen,  it  fol 
lows,"  as  the  good  professor  used  to  say 
at  college,  as  he  emerged  from  a  hope 
less  labyrinth  of  postulates  and  prelimi 
naries  an  hour  long,  that  the  guests 
who  abused  the  courtesy  of  their  hosts, 


The  Soul  of  the  Gentleman  31 

upon  the  late  transcontinental  trip  to 
drive  the  golden  spike,  may  have  been 
persons  of  social  eminence,  but  were  in 
no  honorable  sense  gentlemen. 

It  is  undoubtedly  a  difficult  word  to 
manage.  But  gentlemanly  conduct  and 
ungentlemanly  conduct  are  expressions 
which  are  perfectly  intelligible,  and  that 
fact  shows  that  there  is  a  distinct  stand 
ard  in  every  intelligent  mind  by  which 
behavior  is  measured.  To  say  that  a 
man  was  born  a  gentleman  means  not 
at  all  that  he  is  courteous,  refined,  and 
intelligent,  but  only  that  he  was  born  of 
a  family  whose  circumstances  at  some 
time  had  been  easy  and  agreeable,  and 
which  belonged  to  a  traditionally  "good 
society."  But  such  a  man  may  be  false 
and  mean,  and  ignorant  and  coarse.  Is 
he  a  gentleman  because  he  was  born 
such?  On  the  other  hand,  the  child 
of  long  generations  of  ignorant  and  la- 


32  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

borious  boors  may  be  humane,  honora 
ble,  and  modest,  but  with  total  ignor 
ance  of  the  usages  of  good  society.  He 
may  be  as  upright  as  Washington,  as 
unselfish  as  Sidney,  as  brave  as  Bay 
ard,  as  modest  as  Falkland.  But  he 
may  also  outrage  all  the  little  social 
proprieties.  Is  he  a  gentleman  because 
he  is  honest  and  modest  and  humane  ? 
In  describing  Lovelace,  should  we  not 
say  that  he  was  a  gentleman  ?  Should 
we  naturally  say  so  of  Burns?  But, 
again,  is  it  not  a  joke  to  describe 
George  IV.  as  a  gentleman,  while  it 
would  be  impossible  to  deny  the  name 
to  Major  Dobbin  ? 

The  catch,  however,  is  simple.  Us 
ing  the  same  word,  we  interchange  its 
different  meanings.  To  say  that  a  man 
is  born  a  gentleman  is  to  say  that  he 
was  born  under  certain  social  condi 
tions.  To  say  in  commendation  or  de- 


The  Soul  of  the  Gentleman  33 

scription  of  a  man  that  he  is  a  gentle 
man,  or  gentlemanly,  is  to  say  that  he 
has  certain  qualities  of  character  or 
manner  which  are  wholly  independent 
of  the  circumstances  of  his  family  or 
training.  In  the  latter  case,  we  speak 
of  individual  and  personal  qualities ;  in 
the  former,  we  speak  of  external  con 
ditions.  In  the  one  case  we  refer  to 
the  man  himself;  in  the  other,  to  cer 
tain  circumstances  around  him.  The 
quality  which  is  called  gentlemanly  is 
that  which,  theoretically,  and  often  act 
ually,  distinguishes  the  person  who  is 
born  in  a  certain  social  position.  It  de 
scribes  the  manner  in  which  such  a  per 
son  ought  to  behave. 

Behavior,  however,  can  be  imitated. 
Therefore,  neither  the  fact  of  birth  un 
der  certain  conditions,  nor  a  certain 
ease  and  grace  and  charm  of  manner, 
certify  the  essential  character  of  gentle- 


34  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

man.  Lovelace  had  the  air  and  breed 
ing  of  a  gentleman  like  Don  Giovanni ; 
he  was  familiar  with  polite  society ;  he 
was  refined  and  pleasing  and  fascinat 
ing  in  manner.  Even  the  severe  As- 
tarte  could  not  call  him  a  boor.  She 
does  not  know  a  gentleman,  probably, 
more  gentlemanly  than  Lovelace.  She 
must,  then,  admit  that  she  can  not  arbi 
trarily  deny  Lovelace  to  be  a  gentle 
man  because  he  is  a  libertine,  or  be 
cause  he  is  false,  or  mean,  or  of  a  coarse 
mind.  She  may,  indeed,  insist  that  only 
upright  and  honorable  men  of  refined 
mind  and  manner  are  gentlemen,  and 
she  may  also  maintain  that  only  men 
of  truly  lofty  and  royal  souls  are  prin 
ces  ;  but  there  will  still  remain  crowds 
of  immoral  gentlemen  and  unworthy 
kings. 

The  persons  who  abused  the  gener 
ous  courtesy  of  the   Northern    Pacific 


The  Soul  of  the  Gentleman  35 

trip  were  gentlemen  in  one  sense,  and 
not  in  the  other.  They  were  gentlemen 
so  far  as  they  could  not  help  themselves, 
but  they  were  not  gentlemen  in  what 
depended  upon  their  own  will.  Ac 
cording  to  the  story,  they  did  not  even 
imitate  the  conduct  of  gentlemen,  and 
Astarte  must  admit  that  they  belonged 
to  the  large  class  of  ungentlemanly  gen 
tlemen. 

(December,  1883) 


THEATRE   MANNERS 

AN  admirable  actress  said  the  other 
day  that  the  audience  in  the  theatre  was 
probably  little  aware  how  much  its  con 
duct  affected  the  performance.  A  list 
less,  whispering,  uneasy  house  makes  a 
distracted  and  ineffective  play.  To  an 
orator,  or  an  actor,  or  an  artist  of  any 
kind  who  appeals  personally  to  the  pub 
lic,  nothing  is  so  fatal  as  indifference. 
In  the  original  Wallack's  Theatre,  many 
years  ago,  the  Easy  Chair  was  one  of  a 
party  in  a  stage-box  during  a  fine  per 
formance  of  one  of  the  plays  in  which 
the  acting  of  the  manager  was  most  ef 
fective.  It  was  a  gay  party,  and  with 
the  carelessness  of  youth  it  made  merry 


Theatre  Manners  37 

while  the  play  went  on.  As  the  box 
was  directly  upon  the  stage,  the  merri 
ment  was  a  gross  discourtesy,  although 
unintentional,  both  to  the  actors  and  to 
the  audience ;  and  at  last  the  old  Wai- 
lack,  still  gayly  playing  his  part,  moved 
towards  the  box,  and  without  turning  his 
head,  in  a  voice  audible  to  the  offend 
ers  but  not  to  the  rest  of  the  audience, 
politely  reminded  the  thoughtless  group 
that  they  were  seriously  disturbing  the 
play.  There  was  some  indignation  in 
the  box,  but  the  rebuke  was  courteous 
and  richly  deserved.  Nothing  is  more 
unpardonable  than  such  disturbance. 
During;  this  winter  a  gentleman  at 

o  o 

one  of  the  theatres  commented  severely 
upon  the  loud  talking  of  a  party  of  la 
dies,  which  prevented  his  enjoyment  of 
the  play,  and  when  the  gentleman  at 
tending  the  ladies  retorted  warmly,  the 
disturbed  gentleman  resorted  to  the 


38  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

wild  justice  of  a  blow.  There  was  an 
altercation,  a  publication  in  the  newspa 
pers,  and  finally  an  apology  and  a  rec 
onciliation.  But  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
there  was  some  good  result  from  the  in 
cident  A  waggish  clergyman  once  saw 
a  pompous  clerical  brother  march  quite 
to  the  head  of  the  aisle  of  a  crowded 
church  to  find  a  seat,  with  an  air  of  ex 
pectation  that  all  pew- doors  would  fly 
open  at  his  approach.  But  as  every 
seat  was  full,  and  nobody  stirred,  the 
crestfallen  brother  was  obliged  to  re 
trace  his  steps.  As  he  retreated  by  the 
pew,  far  down  the  aisle,  where  the  cler 
ical  wag  was  sitting,  that  pleasant  man 
leaned  over  the  door,  and  greeted  his 
comrade  with  the  sententious  whisp 
er,  "  May  it  be  sanctified  to  you,  dear 
brother !"  Every  right-minded  man  \vill 
wish  the  same  blessing  to  the  rebuke  of 
the  loud -talking  maids  and  youths  in 


Theatre  Manners  39 

theatres  and  concert-halls,  whose  conver 
sation,'  however  lively,  is  not  the  enter 
tainment  which  their  neighbors  have 
come  to  hear. 

Two  or  three  winters  ago  the  Easy 
Chair  applauded  the  conduct  of  Mr. 
Thomas,  who,  at  the  head  of  his  orches 
tra,  was  interrupted  in  the  midst  of  a 
concert  in  Washington  by  the  entry  of 
a  party,  which  advanced  towards  the 
front  of  the  hall  with  much  chatter 
ing  and  rustling,  and  seated  themselves 
and  continued  the  disturbance.  The  or 
chestra  was  in  full  career,  but  Thomas 
rapped  sharply  upon  his  stand,  and 
brought  the  performance  to  an  abrupt- 
pause.  Then,  turning  to  the  audience, 
he  said  —  and  doubtless  with  evident 
and  natural  feeling :  "  I  am  afraid  that 
the  music  interrupts  the  conversation." 
The  remark  was  greeted  with  warm  and 
general  applause ;  and,  waiting  until  en- 


40  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

tire  silence  was  restored,  the  conductor 
raised  his  baton  again,  and  the  perform 
ance  ended  without  further  interruption. 
The  Easy  Chair  improved  the  occa 
sion  to  preach  a  short  sermon  upon  bad 
manners  in  public  places.  But  to  its 
great  surprise  it  was  severely  rebuked 
some  time  afterward  by  Cleopatra  her 
self,  who  said,  with  some  feeling,  that 
she  had  two  reasons  for  complaint. 
The  first  was,  that  her  ancient  friend 
the  Easy  Chair  should  place  her  in  the 
pillory  of  its  public  animadversion ;  and 
the  other  was,  that  the  Easy  Chair 
should  gravely  defend  such  conduct  as 
that  of  Mr.  Thomas.  No  remonstrance 
could  be  more  surprising  and  nothing 
more  unexpected  than  that  Cleopatra 
should  differ  in  opinion  upon  such  a 
point.  To  the  personal  aspect  of  the 
matter  the  Easy  Chair  could  say  only 
that  it  had  never  heard  who  the  offend- 


Theatre  Manners  41 

ers  were,  and  that  it  declined  to  believe 
that  Cleopatra  herself  could  ever  be 
guilty  of  such  conduct.  Her  Majesty 
then  explained  that  she  was  not  guilty. 
She  was  not  of  the  party.  But  it  was 
composed  of  friends  of  hers  who  seated 
themselves  near  her,  and  when  the  words 
of  Mr.  Thomas  concentrated  the  gaze  of 
the  audience  upon  the  disturbers  of  the 
peace,  her  Majesty,  known  to  everybody, 
was  supposed  to  be  the  ringleader  of  the 
emeute.  The  story  at  once  flew  abroad, 
upon  the  wings  of  those  swift  birds  of 
prey — as  she  called  them — the  Wash 
ington  correspondents,  and  she  was  men 
tioned  by  name  as  the  chief  offender. 

It  was  not  difficult  to  persuade  the 
most  placable  of  queens  that  the  Easy 
Chair  could  not  have  intended  a  per 
sonal  censure.  But  the  Chair  could  not 
agree  that  Thomas's  conduct  was  un 
justifiable.  Cleopatra  urged  that  the 


42  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

conductor  of  an  orchestra  at  a  concert  is 
not  responsible  for  the  behavior  of  the 
audience.  An  audience,  she  said,  can 
take  care  of  itself,  and  it  is  an  unwar 
rantable  impertinence  for  a  conductor 
to  arrest  the  performance  because  he  is 
irritated  by  a  noise  of  whispering  voices 
or  of  slamming  doors.  "  I  saw  you,  Mr. 
Easy  Chair,"  she  said,  "  on  the  evening 
of  Rachel's  first  performance  in  this 
country.  What  would  you  have  thought 
if  she  had  stopped  short  in  the  play — it 
was  Corneille's  Les  Horaces,  you  remem 
ber — because  she  was  annoyed  by  the 
rustling  of  the  leaves  of  a  thousand 
books  of  the  play  which  the  audience 
turned  over  at  the  same  moment  ?" 

The  Easy  Chair  declined  to  step  into 
the  snare  which  was  plainly  set  in  its 
sight.  It  would  not  accept  an  illustra 
tion  as  an  argument.  The  enjoyment 
at  a  concert,  it  contended,  for  which  the 


Theatre  Manners  43 

audience  has  paid  in  advance,  and  to 
which  it  is  entitled,  depends  upon  con 
ditions  of  silence  and  order  which  it  can 
not  itself  maintain  without  serious  dis 
turbance.  It  may  indeed  cry  "  Hush !" 
and  "  Put  him  out !"  but  not  only  would 
that  cry  be  of  doubtful  effect,  but  expe 
rience  proves  that  a  concert  audience 
will  not  raise  it.  If  the  audience  were 
left  to  itself,  it  would  permit  late  arri 
vals,  and  all  the  disturbance  of  chatter 
and  movement.  To  twist  the  line  of 
Goldsmith,  those  who  came  to  pray 
would  be  at  the  mercy  of  those  who 
came  to  scoff ;  and  such  mercy  is  mer 
ciless.  The  conductor  stands  in  loco 
parentis.  He  is  the  advocatiis  angeli. 
He  does  for  the  audience  what  it  would 
not  do  for  itself.  He  protects  it  against 
its  own  fatal  good -nature.  He  insists 
that  it  shall  receive  what  it  has  paid  for, 
and  he  will  deal  with  disturbers  as  they 


44  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

deserve.  The  audience,  conscious  of  its 
own  good-humored  impotence,  recog 
nizes  at  once  its  protector,  and  gladly 
applauds  him  for  doing  for  it  what  it 
has  not  the  nerve  to  do  for  itself.  No 
audience  whose  rights  were  defended  as 
Thomas  defended  those  of  his  Washing 
ton  audience  ever  resented  the  defence. 

"  No,"  responded  Cleopatra,  briskly ; 
"  the  same  imbecility  prevents." 

"Very  well;  then  such  an  audience 
plainly  needs  a  strong  and  resolute 
leadership;  and  that  is  precisely  what 
Thomas  supplied.  A  crowd  is  always 
grateful  to  the  man  who  will  do  what 
everybody  in  the  crowd  feels  ought  to 
be  done,  but  what  no  individual  is  quite 
ready  to  undertake." 

When  Cleopatra  said  that  an  audi 
ence  is  quite  competent  to  take  care  of 
itself,  her  remark  was  natural,  for  she 
instinctively  conceived  the  audience  as 


Theatre  Manners  45 

herself  extended  into  a  thousand  per 
sons.  Such  an  audience  would  certain 
ly  be  capable  of  dispensing  with  any 
mentor  or  guide.  But  when  the  Easy 
Chair  asked  her  if  she  was  annoyed 
by  the  chattering  interruption  which 
Thomas  rebuked,  she  replied  that  of 
course  she  was  annoyed.  Yet  when  she 
was  further  asked  if  she  cried  "  Hush  !" 
or  resorted  to  any  means  whatever  to 
quell  the  disturbance,  the  royal  lady 
could  not  help  smiling  as  she  answered, 
"  I  did  not,"  and  the  Easy  Chair  retort 
ed,  "  Yet  an  audience  is  capable  of  pro 
tecting  itself !" 

Meanwhile,  whatever  the  conductor 
or  the  audience  may  or  may  not  do, 
nothing  is  more  vulgar  than  audible 
conversation,  or  any  other  kind  of  dis 
turbance,  during  a  concert.  Sometimes 
it  may  be  mere  thoughtlessness ;  some 
times  boorishness,  the  want  of  the  fine 


46  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

instinct  which  avoids  occasioning  any 
annoyance ;  but  usually  it  is  due  to  a 
desire  to  attract  attention  and  to  affect 
superiority  to  the  common  interest.  It 
is,  indeed,  mere  coarse  ostentation,  like 
wearing  diamonds  at  a  hotel  table  or  a 
purple  velvet  train  in  the  street.  If  the 
audience  had  the  courage  which  Cleo 
patra  attributed  to  it,  that  part  which 
was  annoyed  by  the  barbarians  who 
chatter  and  disturb  would  at  once  sup 
press  the  annoyance  by  an  emphatic  and 
unmistakable  hiss.  If  this  were  the 
practice  in  public  assemblies,  such  inci 
dents  as  that  at  the  Washington  concert 
would  be  unknown.  Until  it  is  the 
practice,  even  were  Cleopatra's  self  the 
offender,  every  self-respecting  conductor 
who  has  a  proper  sense  of  his  duties  to 
the  audience  will  do  with  its  sincere  ap 
proval  what  Mr.  Thomas  did. 

(April,  1883) 


WOMAN'S   DRESS 

THE  American  who  sits  in  a  street 
omnibus  or  railroad -car  and  sees  a 
young  woman  whose  waist  is  pinched 
to  a  point  that  makes  her  breathing 
mere  panting  and  puffing,  and  whose 
feet  are  squeezed  into  shoes  with  a  high 
heel  in  the  middle  of  the  sole,  which 
compels  her  to  stump  and  hobble  as 
she  tries  to  walk,  should  be  very  wary 
of  praising  the  superiority  of  European 
and  American  civilization  to  that  of  the 
East.  The  grade  of  civilization  which 
squeezes  a  waist  into  deformity  is  not, 
in  that  respect  at  least,  superior  to  that 
which  squeezes  a  foot  into  deformity. 
It  is  in  both  instances  a  barbarous  con- 


48  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

ception  alike  of  beauty  and  of  the  func 
tion  of  woman.  The  squeezed  waist 
and  the  squeezed  foot  equally  assume 
that  distortion  of  the  human  frame  may 
be  beautiful,  and  that  helpless  idleness 
is  the  highest  sphere  of  woman. 

But  the  imperfection  of  our  Western 
civilization  shows  itself  in  more  serious 
forms  involving  women.  The  promis 
cuous  herding  of  men  and  women  pris 
oners  in  jails,  the  opposition  to  reforma 
tories  and  penitentiaries  exclusively  for 
women,  and,  in  general,  the  failure  to 
provide,  as  a  matter  of  course,  women 
attendants  and  women  nurses  for  all 
women  prisoners  and  patients,  is  a  sig 
nal  illustration  of  a  low  tone  of  civiliza 
tion.  The  most  revolting  instance  of 
this  abuse  was  the  discovery  during  the 
summer  that  the  patients  in  a  woman's 
insane  hospital  in  New  Orleans  were 
bathed  by  male  attendants. 


Woman's  Dress  49 

It  should  not  need  such  outrages  to 
apprise  us  of  the  worth  of  the  general 
principle  that  humanity  and  decency 
require  that  in  all  public  institutions 
women  should  be  employed  in  the  care 
of  women.  A  wise  proposition  during 
the  year  to  provide  women  at  the  police- 
stations  for  the  examination  of  women 
who  are  arrested  failed  to  become  law. 
It  is  hard,  upon  the  merits  of  the  pro 
posal,  to  understand  why.  Women  who 
are  arrested  may  be  criminals,  or  drunk 
ards,  or  vagabonds,  or  insane,  or  wit 
less,  or  sick.  But  whatever  the  reason 
of  the  arrest,  there  can  be  no  good  rea 
son  whatever,  in  a  truly  civilized  com 
munity,  that  a  woman  taken  under  such 
circumstances  should  be  abandoned  to 
personal  search  and  examination  by  the 
kind  of  men  to  whom  that  business  is 
usually  allotted.  The  surest  sign  of  the 
civilization  of  any  community  is  its  treat- 


50  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

ment  of  women,  and  the  progress  of  our 
civilization  is  shown  by  the  constant 
amelioration  of  that  condition.  But  the 
unreasonable  and  even  revolting  circum 
stances  of  much  of  the  public  treatment 
of  them  may  wisely  modify  ecstasies  over 
our  vast  superiority. 

The  squeezed  waists  and  other  tokens 
of  the  kind  show  that  our  civilization 
has  not  yet  outgrown  the  conception  of 
the  most  meretricious  epochs,  that  wom 
an  exists  for  the  delight  of  man,  and  is 
meant  to  be  a  kind  of  decorated  ap 
pendage  of  his  life,  while  the  men  at 
tendants  and  men  nurses  of  women 
prisoners  and  patients  show  a  most  un 
civilized  disregard  of  the  just  instincts 
of  sex.  We  are  far  from  asserting  that 
therefore  the  position  of  women  in  this 
country  is  to  be  likened  to  their  posi 
tion  in  China,  where  the  contempt  of 
men  denied  them  souls,  or  to  that  among 


Woman's  Dress  51 

savage  tribes,  where  they  are  treated  as 
beasts  of  burden.  But  because  we  are 
not  wallowing  in  the  Slough  of  De 
spond,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  are 
sitting  in  the  House  Beautiful.  The 
traveller  who  has  climbed  to  the  mer  de 
glace  at  Chamouni,  and  sees  the  valley 
wide  outstretched  far  below  him,  sees 
also  far  above  him  the  awful  sunlit  dome 
of  "Sovran  Blanc."  Whatever  point  we 
may  have  reached,  there  is  still  a  higher 
point  to  gain.  Nowhere  in  the  world 
are  women  so  truly  respected  as  here, 
nowhere  ought  they  to  be  more  happy 
than  in  this  country.  But  that  is  no 
reason  that  the  New  Orleans  outrage 
should  be  possible,  while  the  same  good 
sense  and  love  of  justice  which  have  re 
moved  so  many  barriers  to  fair-play  for 
women  should  press  on  more  cheerfully 
than  ever  to  remove  those  that  remain. 

(December,  1882) 


SECRET   SOCIETIES 

THE  melancholy  death  of  young  Mr. 
Leggett,  a  student  at  the  Cornell  Uni 
versity,  has  undoubtedly  occasioned  a 
great  deal  of  thought  in  every  college 
in  the  country  upon  secret  societies. 
Professor  Wilder,  of  Cornell,  has  written 
a  very  careful  and  serious  letter,  in 
which  he  strongly  opposes  them,  plainly 
stating  their  great  disadvantages,  and 
citing  the  order  of  Jesuits  as  the  most 
powerful  and  thoroughly  organized  of  all 
secret  associations,  and  therefore  the  one 
in  which  their  character  and  tendency 
may  best  be  observed.  The  debate  re 
calls  the  history  of  the  Antimasonic 
excitement  in  this  country,  which  is,  how- 


Secret  Societies  53 

ever,  seldom  mentioned  in  recent  years, 
so  that  the  facts  may  not  be  familiar  to 
the  reader. 

In  the  year  1826  William  Morgan, 
living  in  Batavia,  in  the  western  part  of 
New  York,  near  Buffalo,  was  supposed 
to  intend  the  publication  of  a  book 
which  would  reveal  the  secrets  of  Ma 
sonry.  The  Masons  in  the  vicinity  were 
angry,  and  resolved  to  prevent  the  pub 
lication,  and  made  several  forcible  but  in 
effective  attempts  for  that  purpose.  On 
the  nth  of  September,  1826,  a  party  of 
persons  from  Canandaigua  came  to  Bata 
via  and  procured  the  arrest  of  Morgan 
upon  a  criminal  charge,  and  he  was  car 
ried  to  Canandaigua  for  examination. 
He  was  acquitted,  but  was  immediately 
arrested  upon  a  civil  process,  upon 
which  an  execution  was  issued,  and  he 
was  imprisoned  in  the  jail  at  Canandai 
gua.  The  next  evening  he  was  dis- 


54  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

charged  at  the  instance  of  those  who 
had  caused  his  arrest,  and  was  taken 
from  the  jail  after  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening.  Those  who  had  obtained  the 
discharge  instantly  seized  him,  gagged 
and  bound  him,  and  throwing  him  into 
a  carnage,  hurried  off  to  Rochester.  By 
relays  of  horses  and  by  different  hands 
he  was  borne  along,  until  he  was  lodged 
in  the  magazine  of  Fort  Niagara,  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Niagara  River. 

The  circumstances  of  his  arrest,  and 
those  that  had  preceded  it,  had  aroused 
and  inflamed  the  minds  of  the  people  in 
Batavia  and  the  neighborhood.  A  com 
mittee  was  appointed  at  a  public  meet 
ing  to  ascertain  all  the  facts,  and  to 
bring  to  justice  any  criminals  that  might 
be  found.  They  could  discover  only 
that  Morgan  had  been  seized  upon  his 
discharge  in  Canandaigua  and  hurried 
off  towards  Rochester;  but  beyond  that, 


Secret  Societies  55 

nothing.  The  excitement  deepened  and 
spread.  A  great  crime  had  apparently 
been  committed,  and  it  was  hidden  in 
absolute  secrecy.  Other  meetings  were 
held  in  other  towns,  and  other  commit 
tees  were  appointed,  and  both  meetings 
and  committees  were  composed  of  men 
of  both  political  parties.  Investigation 
showed  that  Masons  only  were  implicat 
ed  in  the  crime,  and  that  scarcely  a 
Mason  aided  the  inquiry;  that  many 
Masons  ridiculed  and  even  justified  the 
offence;  that  the  committees  were  taunt 
ed  with  their  inability  to  procure  the 
punishment  of  the  offenders  in  courts 
where  judges,  sheriffs,  juries,  and  wit 
nesses  were  Masons;  that  witnesses  dis 
appeared  ;  that  the  committees  were  re 
viled  ;  and  gradually  Masonry  itself  was 
held  responsible  for  the  mysterious 
doom  of  Morgan. 

The  excitement  became  a  frenzy.  The 


56  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

Masons  were  hated  and  denounced  as 
the  Irish  were  in  London  after  the 
"Irish  night,"  or  the  Roman  Catholics 
during  the  Titus  Gates  fury.  In  Jan 
uary,  1827,  some  of  those  who  had  been 
arrested  were  tried,  and  it  was  hoped 
that  the  evidence  at  their  trials  would 
clear  the  mystery.  But  they  pleaded 
guilty,  and  this  hope  was  baffled.  Mean 
while  a  body  of  delegates  from  the 
various  committees  met  at  Lewiston  to 
ascertain  the  fate  of  Morgan,  and  they 
discovered  that  in  or  near  the  magazine 
in  which  he  had  been  confined  he  had 
been  put  to  death.  His  book,  with  its  rev 
elations,  had  been  published,  and  what 
was  not  told  was,  of  course,  declared  to 
be  infinitely  worse  than  the  actual  dis 
closures.  The  excitement  now  became 
political.  It  was  alleged  that  Masonry 
held  itself  superior  to  the  laws,  and  that 
Masons  were  more  loyal  to  their  Mason- 


Secret  Societies  57 

ic  oaths  than  to  their  duty  as  citizens. 
Masonry,  therefore,  was  held  to  be  a 
fatal  foe  to  the  government  and  to  the 
country,  which  must  be  destroyed ;  and 
in  several  town-meetings  in  Genesee  and 
Monroe  counties,  in  the  spring  of  1827, 
Masons,  as  such,  were  excluded  from 
office.  At  the  next  general  election  the 
Antimasons  nominated  a  separate  tick 
et,  and  they  carried  the  counties  of 
Genesee,  Monroe,  Livingston,  Orleans, 
and  Niagara  against  both  the  great  par 
ties.  A  State  organization  followed, 
and  in  the  election  of  1830  the  Anti- 
masonic  candidate,  Francis  Granger, 
was  adopted  by  the  National  Repub 
licans,  and  received  one  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand  votes,  against  one  hun 
dred  and  twenty-eight  thousand  for  Mr. 
Throop.  From  a  State  organization  the 
Antimasons  became  a  national  party, 
and  in  1832  nominated  William  Wirt 


58  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

for  the  presidency.  The  Antimasonic 
electoral  ticket  was  adopted  by  the  Na 
tional  Republicans,  and  the  union  be 
came  the  Whig  party,  which,  in  1838, 
elected  Mr.  Seward  Governor  of  New 
York,  and  in  1840  General  Harrison 
President  of  the  United  States. 

The  spring  of  this  triumphant  political 
movement  was  hostility  to  a  secret  soci 
ety.  Many  of  the  most  distinguished 
political  names  of  Western  New  York, 
including  Millard  Fillmore,  William  H. 
Seward,  Thurlow  Weed,  Francis  Gran 
ger,  James  Wadsworth,  George  W.  Pat 
terson,  were  associated  with  it.  And  as 
the  larger  portion  of  the  Whig  party  was 
merged  in  the  Republican,  the  dominant 
party  of  to-day  has  a  certain  lineal  de 
scent  from  the  feelings  aroused  by  the 
abduction  of  Morgan  from  the  jail  at 
Canandaigua.  And  as  his  disappearance 
and  the  odium  consequent  upon  it  stig- 


Secret  Societies  59 

matized  Masonry,  so  that  it  lay  for  a  long 
time  moribund,  and  although  revived  in 
later  years,  cannot  hope  to  regain  its  old 
importance,  so  the  death  of  young  Leg- 
gett  is  likely  to  wound  fatally  the  system 
of  college  secret  societies. 

The  young  man  was  undergoing  initia 
tion  into  a  secret  society.  He  was  blind 
folded,  and  two  companions  were  leading 
him  along  the  edge  of  a  cliff  over  a  deep 
ravine,  when  the  earth  gave  way,  or  they 
slipped  and  fell  from  the  precipice,  and 
Leggett  was  so  injured  that  he  died  in 
two  hours.  There  was  no  allegation  or 
suspicion  of  blame.  There  was,  indeed, 
an  attempt  of  some  enemies  of  the  Cor 
nell  University — a  hostility  due  either 
to  supposed  conflict  of  interests  or  sec 
tarian  jealousy — to  stigmatize  the  insti 
tution,  but  it  failed  instantly  and  utterly. 
Indeed,  General  Leggett,  of  the  Patent- 
office  in  Washington,  the  father  of  the 


60  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

unfortunate  youth,  at  once  wrote  a  very 
noble  and  touching  letter  to  shield  the 
university  and  the  companions  of  his 
son  from  blame  or  responsibility.  He 
would  not  allow  his  grief  to  keep  him 
silent  when  a  word  could  avert  injustice, 
and  his  modest  magnanimity  won  for 
his  sorrow  the  tender  sympathy  of  all 
who  read  his  letter. 

Every  collegian  knows  that  there  is 
no  secrecy  whatever  in  what  is  called  a 
secret  society.  Everybody  knows,  not 
in  particular,  but  in  general,  that  its  ob 
ject  is  really  "good-fellowship,"  with  the 
charm  of  mystery  added.  Everybody 
knows — for  the  details  of  such  societies 
in  all  countries  are  essentially  the  same 
— that  there  are  certain  practical  jokes 
of  initiation — tossings  in  blankets,  lay 
ings  in  coffins,  dippings  in  cold  water, 
stringent  catechisms,  moral  exhortations, 
with  darkness  and  sudden  light  and  mys- 


Secret  Societies  61 

terious  voices  from  forms  invisible,  and 
then  mystic  signs  and  clasps  and  mottoes, 
"  the  whole  to  conclude  "  with  the  best 
supper  that  the  treasury  can  afford.  Lit 
erary  brotherhood,  philosophic  fraterni 
ty,  intellectual  emulation,  these  are  the 
noble  names  by  which  the  youth  deceive 
themselves  and  allure  the  Freshmen;  but 
the  real  business  of  the  society  is  to  keep 
the  secret,  and  to  get  all  the  members 
possible  from  the  entering  class. 

Each  society,  of  course,  gets  "the  best 
fellows."  Every  touter  informs  the  cal 
low  Freshman  that  all  men  of  character 
and  talent  hasten  to  join  his  society,  and 
impresses  the  fresh  imagination  with 
the  names  of  the  famous  honorary  mem 
bers.  The  Freshman,  if  he  be  acute — 
and  he  is  more  so  every  year — naturally 
wonders  how  the  youth,  who  are  un 
deniably  commonplace  in  the  daily  in 
tercourse  of  college,  should  become  such 


62  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

lofty  beings  in  the  hall  of  a  secret  soci 
ety;  or,  more  probably,  he  thinks  of 
nothing  but  the  sport  or  the  mysterious 
incentive  to  a  studious  and  higher  life 
which  the  society  is  to  furnish.  He  feels 
the  passionate  curiosity  of  the  neophyte. 
He  is  smitten  with  the  zeal  of  the  hermet- 
ical  philosophy.  He  would  learn  more 
than  Rosicrucian  lore.  That  is  a  vision 
soon  dispelled.  But  the  earnest  curios 
ity  changes  into  esprit  du  corps,  and  the 
mischief  is  that  the  secrecy  and  the  soci 
ety  feeling  are  likely  to  take  precedence 
of  the  really  desirable  motives  in  college. 
There  is  a  hundredfold  greater  zeal  to 
obtain  members  than  there  is  generous 
rivalry  among  the  societies  to  carry  off 
the  true  college  honors.  And  if  the  pur 
pose  be  admirable,  why,  as  Professor 
Wilder  asks,  the  secrecy  ?  What  more 
can  the  secret  society  do  for  the  intellect 
ual  or  social  training  of  the  student  than 


Secret  Societies  63 

the  open  society  ?  Has  any  secret  society 
in  an  American  college  done,  or  can  it 
do,  more  for  the  intelligent  and  ambi 
tious  young  man  than  the  Union  Debat 
ing  Society  at  the  English  Cambridge 
University, or  the  similar  club  at  Oxford? 
There  Macaulay,  Gladstone,  the  Austins, 
Charles  Buller,  Tooke,  Ellis,  and  the 
long  illustrious  list  of  noted  and  able 
Englishmen  were  trained,  and  in  the 
only  way  that  manly  minds  can  be  train 
ed,  by  open,  free,  generous  rivalry  and 
collision.  The  member  of  a  secret  soci 
ety  in  college  is  really  confined,  socially 
and  intellectually,  to  its  membership, 
for  it  is  found  that  the  secret  gradually 
supplant  the  open  societies.  But  that 
membership  depends  upon  luck,  not 
upon  merit,  while  it  has  the  capital  dis 
advantage  of  erecting  false  standards  of 
measurement,  so  that  the  Mu  Nu  man 
cannot  be  just  to  the  hero  of  Zcla  Eta. 


64  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

The  secrecy  is  a  spice  that  overbears 
the  food.  The  mystic  paraphernalia  is 
a  relic  of  the  baby-house,  which  a  gen 
erous  youth  disdains. 

There  is,  indeed,  an  agreeable  senti 
ment  in  the  veiled  friendship  of  the  se 
cret  society  which  every  social  nature 
understands.  But  as  students  are  now 
becoming  more  truly  "men"  as  they 
enter  college,  because  of  the  higher 
standard  of  requirement,  it  is  probable 
that  the  glory  of  the  secret  society  is 
already  waning,  and  that  the  allegiance 
of  the  older  universities  to  the  open 
arenas  of  frank  and  manly  intellectual 
contests,  involving  no  expense,  no  dis 
sipation,  and  no  perilous  temptation,  is 
returning.  At  least  there  will  now  be 
an  urgent  question  among  many  of  the 
best  men  in  college  whether  it  ought 
not  to  return. 

(January,  1874) 


TOBACCO   AND   HEALTH 

WE  do  not  know  if  readers  upon  your 
side  of  the  water  have  watched  with  any 
interest  the  present  violent  onslaught  in 
both  England  and  France  upon  the  use 
of  tobacco.  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie  (of 
London)  has  declared  strongly  against 
its  use ;  arid  at  a  recent  meeting  at 
Edinburgh  of  the  British  Anti-Tobacco 
Society,  Professor  Miller,  moving  the 
first  resolution,  as  follows :  "  That  as 
the  constituent  principles  which  tobacco 
contains  are  highly  poisonous,  the  prac 
tices  of  smoking  and  snuffing  tend  in 
a  variety  of  ways  to  injure  the  physical 
and  mental  constitution,"  continued: 
"  No  man  who  was  a  hard  smoker  had 


66  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

a  steady  hand.  But  not  only  had  it  a 
debilitating  and  paralyzing  effect ;  but 
he  could  tell  of  patients  who  were  com 
pletely  paralyzed  in  their  limbs  by  in 
veterate  smoking.  He  might  tell  of  a 
patient  of  his  who  brought  on  an  at 
tack  of  paralysis  by  smoking ;  wrho  was 
cured,  indeed,  by  simple  means  enough, 
accompanied  with  the  complete  discon 
tinuance  of  the  practice ;  but  who  after 
wards  took  to  it  again,  and  got  a  new 
attack  of  paralysis  ;  and  who  could  now 
play  with  himself,  as  it  were,  because 
when  he  wanted  a  day's  paralysis  or  an 
approach  to  it,  he  had  nothing  to  do 
but  to  indulge  more  or  less  freely  with 
the  weed.  Only  the  other  day,  the 
French — among  whom  the  practice  was 
carried  even  to  a  greater  extent  than 
with  us — made  an  estimate  of  its  effects 
in  their  schools,  and  academies,  and 
colleges.  They  took  the  young  men 


Tobacco  and  Health  67 

attending  these  institutions,  classified 
them  into  those  who  smoked  habitually 
and  those  who  did  not,  and  estimated 
their  physical  and  intellectual  standing, 
perhaps  their  moral  standing  too,  but 
he  could  not  say.  The  result  was,  that 
they  found  that  those  who  did  not  smoke 
were  the  stronger  lads  and  better  schol 
ars,  were  altogether  more  reputable  peo 
ple,  and  more  useful  members  of  society 
than  those  who  habitually  used  the  drug. 
What  was  the  consequence  ?  Louis  Na 
poleon — one  of  the  good  things  which 
he  had  done — instantly  issued  an  edict 
that  no  smoking  should  be  permitted 
in  any  school,  college,  or  academy.  In 
one  day  he  put  out  about  30,000  pipes 
in  Paris  alone.  Let  our  young  smokers 
put  that  in  their  pipe  and  smoke  it." 
The  resolution  was  agreed  to. 

Is  it  possible  to  entertain  the  idea 
that  Louis  Napoleon  has  increased  the 


68  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

tax  on  tobacco,  latterly,  very  largely,  in 
the  hope  of  discouraging  its  use,  and  so 
contributing  to  the  weal  of  the  nation  ? 
If  so,  it  would  illustrate  one  of  the  beau 
tiful  uses  of  despotic  privilege. 

{February ',  1861) 


TOBACCO  AND   MANNERS 


THE  "old  school"  of  manners  has  fall 
en  into  disrepute.  Sir  Charles  Grandi- 
son  is  a  comical  rather  than  a  courtly 
figure  to  this  generation  ;  and  the  man 
whose  manners  may  be  described  as 
Grandisonian  is  usually  called  a  pom 
pous  and  grandiloquent  old  prig.  Cer 
tainly  the  elaborately  dressed  gentleman 
speaking  to  a  lady  only  with  polished 
courtesy  of  phrase,  and  avoiding  in  her 
presence  all  coarse  words  and  acts, 
handing  her  in  the  minuet  with  inex 
pressible  grace  and  deference,  and  show 
ing  an  exquisite  homage  in  every  mo 
tion,  was  a  very  different  figure  from 


70  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

the  gentleman  in  a  shooting-jacket  or 
morning  sack  "chaffing"  a  lady  with 
the  freshest  slang,  and  smoking  in  her 
face.  They  are  undeniably  different, 
and  the  later  figure  is  wholly  free  from 
Grandisonian  elegance  and  elaboration. 
But  is  he  much  more  truly  a  gentleman? 
Is  he  our  Sidney,  our  Chevalier  Bayard, 
our  Admirable  Crichton  ?  Is  that  re 
fined  consideration  and  gentle  defer 
ence,  which  is  the  flower  of  courtesy,  an 
old-fashioned  folly  ? 

The  overwrought  politeness  is  made 
very  ridiculous  upon  the  stage,  and 
Richardson  is  undoubtedly  hard  read 
ing  for  the  general  consumer  of  novels. 
It  is  true,  also,  that  fine  morals  do  not 
always  go  with  fine  manners,  and  that 
Lovelace  had  a  fascination  of  address 
which  John  Knox  lacked.  The  chaff 
and  slang  of  the  Bayard  of  to-day  are 
at  least  decent,  and  his  morals  probably 


Tobacco  and  Manners  71 

purer  than  those  of  the  courtly  and 
punctilious  old  Sir  Roger  de  Coverleys. 
Possibly ;  but  it  has  been  wisely  said 
that  hypocrisy  is  the  homage  paid  by 
vice  to  virtue.  The  good  manners  of  a 
bad  man  are  a  rich  dress  upon  a  dis 
eased  body.  They  are  the  graceful  form 
of  a  vase  full  of  dirty  water.  The  liq 
uid  may  be  poisonous,  but  the  vessel  is 
beautiful.  Some  of  the  worst  Lotharios 
in  the  world  have  a  personal  charm 
which  is  irresistible.  Many  a  stately 
compliment  was  paid  by  a  graciously 
bowing  satyr  in  laced  velvet  coat  and 
periwig,  at  the  court  of  Louis  the  Great, 
and  paid  for  the  basest  purpose ;  but 
the  grace  and  the  courtesy  were  bor 
rowed,  like  plumage  of  living  hues  to 
deck  carrion.  They  were  not  a  part  of 
the  baseness,  and  you  do  not  escape 
dirty  water  by  breaking  the  vase.  If 
the  older  morals  were  worse  than  the 


72  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

new,  and  the  older  manners  were  better, 
cannot  we  who  live  to-day,  and  who 
may  have  everything,  combine  the  new 
morals  and  the  old  manners  ? 

We  can  spare  some  elaboration  of 
form,  but  we  cannot  safely  spare  the 
substance  of  refined  deference.  If  Ro 
meo  be  permitted  to  treat  Juliet  as  hos 
tlers  are  supposed  to  treat  barmaids, 
and  as  the  heroes  of  Fielding  and  Smol 
lett  treat  Abigails  upon  a  journey,  they 
will  both  lose  self-respect  and  mutual 
respect.  It  was  a  wise  father  who  said 
to  his  son,  "  Beware  of  the  woman  who 
allows  you  to  kiss  her."  The  woman  who 
does  not  require  of  a  man  the  form  of 
respect  invites  him  to  discard  the  sub 
stance.  And  there  is  one  violation  of 
the  form  which  is  recent  and  gross,  and 
might  be  well  cited  as  a  striking  illus 
tration  of  the  decay  of  manners.  It  is 
the  practice  of  smoking  in  the  society 


Tobacco  and  Manners  73 

of  ladies  in  public  places,  whether  driv 
ing,  or  walking,  or  sailing,  or  sitting. 
There  are  preux  chevaliers  who  would 
be  honestly  amazed  if  they  were  told 
they  did  not  behave  like  gentlemen,  who, 
sitting  with  a  lady  on  a  hotel  piazza,  or 
strolling  on  a  public  park,  whip  out  a 
cigarette,  light  it,  and  puff  as  tranquilly 
as  if  they  were  alone  in  their  rooms. 
Or  a  young  man  comes  alone  upon  the 
deck  of  a  steamer,  where  throngs  of 
ladies  are  sitting,  and  blows  clouds  of 
tobacco  smoke  in  their  faces,  without 
even  remarking  that  tobacco  is  disa 
greeable  to  some  people.  This  is  not, 
indeed,  one  of  the  seven  deadly  sins,  but 
a  man  who  unconcernedly  sings  false 
betrays  that  he  has  no  ear  for  music, 
and  the  man  who  smokes  in  this  way 
shows  that  he  is  not  quite  a  gentleman. 
But  some  ladies  smoke  ?  Yes,  and 
some  ladies  drink  liquor.  Does  that 


74  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

mend  the  matter  ?  The  Easy  Chair  has 
seen  a  lady  at  the  head  of  her  own  table 
smoking  a  fine  cigar.  You  will  see  a 
great  many  highly  dressed  women  in 
Paris  smoking  cigarettes.  Does  all  this 
change  the  situation  ?  Does  this  make 
it  more  gentlemanly  to  smoke  with  a 
lady  beside  you  in  a  carriage,  or  upon  a 
bench  on  the  piazza  ?  But  some  ladies 
like  the  odor  of  a  cigar?  Not  many; 
and  the  taste  of  those  who  sincerely  do  so 
cannot  justify  the  habit  of  promiscuous 
puffing  in  their  presence.  The  intima 
cy  of  domesticity  is  governed  by  other 
rules;  but  a  gentleman  smoking  would 
hardly  enter  his  own  drawing-room, 
where  other  ladies  sat  with  his  wife, 
without  a  word  of  apology.  The  Easy 
Chair  is  no  King  James,  and  is  more 
likely  to  issue  blasts  of  tobacco  than 
blasts  against  it.  But  King  James  be 
longed  to  a  very  selfish  sex — a  sex  which 


Tobacco  and  Manners  75 

seems  often  to  suppose  that  its  indul 
gences  and  habits  are  to  be  tenderly  tol 
erated,  for  no  other  reason  than  that 
they  are  its  habits.  Therefore  the  young 
woman  must  defend  herself  by  showing 
plainly  that  she  prohibits  the  intrusion  of 
which,  if  suffered,  she  is  really  the  victim. 
In  other  times  the  Easy  Chair  has  seen 
the  lovely  Laura  Matilda  unwilling  to 
refuse  to  dance  with  the  partner  who 
had  bespoken  her  hand  for  the  german, 
although  when  he  presented  himself  he 
was  plainly  flown  with  wine.  The  Easy 
Chair  has  seen  the  hapless,  foolish  maid 
encircled  by  those  Bacchic  arms,  and 
then  a  headlong  whirl  and  dash  down 
the  room,  ending  in  the  promiscuous 
overthrow  and  downfall  of  maid,  Bac 
chus,  and  musicians. 

If  in  the  Grandisonian  day  the  morals 
were  wanting,  it  was  something  to  have 
the  manners.  They  at  least  were  to  the 


76  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

imagination  a  memory  and  a  prophecy. 
They  recalled  the  idyllic  age  when  fine 
manners  expressed  fine  feelings,  and  they 
foretold  the  return  of  Astraea  to  her  an 
cient  haunts.  Here  is  young  Adonis 
dreaming  of  a  four-in-hand  and  a  yacht, 
like  any  other  gentleman.  Let  us  hope 
that  he  knows  the  test  of  a  gentleman 
not  to  be  the  ownership  of  blood-horses 
and  a  unique  drag,  but  perfect  courtesy 
founded  upon  fine  human  feeling — that 
rare  and  indescribable  gentleness  and 
consideration  which  rests  upon  manner 
as  lightly  as  the  bloom  upon  a  fruit.  It 
may  be  imitated,  as  gold  and  diamonds 
are.  But  no  counterfeit  can  harm  it; 
and,  Adonis,  it  is  incompatible  with 
smoking  in  a  lady's  face,  even  if  she 
acquiesces. 

(September,  1879) 


Tobacco  and  Manners  77 


Apollodorus  came  in  the  other  morn 
ing  and  announced  to  the  Easy  Chair 
that  it  had  been  made  by  common  con 
sent  arbiter  of  a  dispute  in  a  circle  of 
young  men.  "  The  question,"  said  he, 
"  is  not  a  new  one  in  itself,  but  it  con 
stantly  recurs,  for  it  is  the  inquiry  under 
what  conditions  a  gentleman  may  smoke 
in  the  presence  of  ladies." 

The  Easy  Chair  replied  that  it  could 
not  answer  more  pertinently  than  in  the 
words  of  the  famous  Princess  Emilia, 
who,  upon  being  asked  by  a  youth 
who  was  attending  her  in  a  promenade 
around  the  garden,  "  What  should  you 
say  if  a  gentleman  asked  to  smoke  as 
he  walked  with  you  ?"  replied,  "  It  is  not 
supposable,  for  no  gentleman  would  pro 
pose  it." 


78  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

Naturally  that  youth  did  not  venture 
to  light  even  a  cigarette.  Emilia  had 
parried  his  question  so  dexterously  that, 
although  the  rebuke  was  stinging,  he 
could  not  even  pretend  to  be  offended. 
His  question  was  merely  a  form  of  say 
ing,  "  I  am  about  to  smoke,  and  what  have 
you  to  say  ?"  That  he  asked  the  ques 
tion  was  evidence  of  a  lingering  persua 
sion,  inherited  from  an  ancestry  of  gen 
tlemen,  that  it  was  not  seemly  to  puff 
tobacco  smoke  around  a  lady  with  whom 
he  was  walking. 

Apollodorus  was  silent  for  a  moment, 
as  if  reflecting  whether  this  anecdote 
was  to  be  regarded  as  a  general  judg 
ment  of  the  arbiter  that  a  gentleman 
will  never  smoke  in  the  presence  of  a 
lady.  But  the  Easy  Chair  broke  in 
upon  his  meditation  with  a  question, 
"  If  you  had  a  son,  should  you  wish  to 
meet  him  smoking  as  he  accompanied 


Tobacco  and  Manners  79 

a  lady  upon  the  avenue  ?  or,  were  you 
the  father  of  a  daughter,  should  you 
wish  to  see  her  cavalier  smoking  as  he 
walked  by  her  side  ?  Upon  your  own 
theory  of  what  is  gentlemanly  and  cour 
teous  and  respectful  and  becoming  in 
the  manner  of  a  man  towards  a  woman, 
should  you  regard  the  spectacle  with 
satisfaction  ?" 

"Well,"  replied  Apollodorus,  "isn't 
that  rather  a  high-flying  view  ?  When 
can  a  man  smoke — " 

"  But  you  are  not  answering,"  inter 
rupted  the  Easy  Chair.  "  Of  two  youths 
walking  with  your  daughter,  one  of 
whom  was  smoking  a  cigarette,  or  a 
cigar,  or  a  pipe,  as  he  attended  her,  and 
the  other  was  not  smoking,  which  would 
seem  to  you  the  more  gentlemanly  ?" 

"  The  latter,"  said  Apollodorus,  prompt 
ly  and  frankly. 

"  It  appears,  then,"  returned  the  Easy 


8o  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

Chair,  assuming  the  Socratic  manner, 
"  that  there'  are  circumstances  under 
which  a  gentleman  will  not  smoke  in 
the  presence  of  a  lady.  But  to  answer 
your  question  directly,  it  is  not  possible 
to  prescribe  an  exact  code,  although  cer 
tain  conditions  may  be  definitely  stated. 
For  instance,  a  gentleman  will  not  smoke 
while  walking  with  a  lady  in  the  street. 
He  will  not  smoke  while  paying  her  an 
evening  visit  in  her  drawing-room.  He 
will  not  smoke  while  driving  with  her 
in  the  Park." 

It  is  significant  of  a  radical  change  in 
manners  that  such  rules  can  be  laid 
down,  because  formerly  the  question 
could  not  have  arisen.  The  grandfa 
ther  of  Apollodorus,  who  was  the  flower 
of  courtesy,  could  no  more  have  smoked 
with  a  lady  with  whom  he  was  walking 
or  driving  than  he  could  have  attended 
her  without  a  coat  or  collar.  Yet  man- 


Tobacco  and  Manners  81 

ners  change,  and  the  grandfather  must 
not  insist  that  those  of  his  time  were 
best  because  they  were  those  of  his  time. 
It  is  but  a  little  while  since  that  a  gen 
tleman  who  appeared  at  a  party  without 
gloves  would  have  been  a  "  queer  "  fig 
ure.  But  now  should  he  wear  gloves  he 
would  be  remarked  as  unfamiliar  with 
good  usage. 

It  does  not  argue  a  decline  of  cour 
tesy  that  the  Grandisonian  compliment 
and  the  ineffable  bending  over  a  lady's 
hand  and  respectful  kissing  of  the  fin 
ger-tips  have  yielded  to  a  simpler  and 
less  stately  manner.  The  woman  of  the 
minuet  was  not  really  more  respected 
than  the  woman  of  the  waltz.  How 
ever  the  word  gentlemanly  may  be  de 
fined,  it  will  not  be  questioned  that  the 
quality  which  it  describes  is  sympa 
thetic  regard  for  the  feelings  of  others 
and  the  manner  which  evinces  it.  The 

6 


82  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

manner,  of  course,  may  be  counterfeited 
and  put  to  base  uses.  To  say  that 
Lovelace  has  a  gentlemanly  manner  is 
not  to  say  that  he  is  a  gentleman,  but 
only  that  he  has  caught  the  trick  of  a 
gentleman.  To  call  him  or  Robert  Ma- 
caire  or  Richard  Turpin  a  gentleman  is 
to  say  only  that  he  behaves  as  a  gentle 
man  behaves.  But  he  is  not  a  gentle 
man,  unless  that  word  describes  man 
ners  and  nothing  more. 

This  is  the  key  to  the  question  of 
Apollodorus.  It  is  not  easy  to  define 
a  gentleman,  but  it  is  perfectly  easy  to 
see  that  in  his  pleasures  and  in  the  lit 
tle  indifferent  practices  of  society  the 
gentleman  will  do  nothing  which  is  dis 
agreeable  to  others.  He  certainly  will 
not  assume  that  a  personal  gratification 
or  indulgence  must  necessarily  be  pleas 
ant  to  others,  nor  will  he  make  the  self 
ish  habits  of  others  a  plea  for  his  own. 


Tobacco  and  Manners  83 

Apollodorus  listened  patiently,  and 
then  said  slowly  that  he  understood  the 
judgment  to  be  that  a  gentleman  would 
smoke  in  the  presence  of  ladies  only 
when  he  knew  that  it  was  agreeable  to 
them,  but  that,  as  the  infinite  grace  and 
courtesy  of  women  often  led  them,  as  an 
act  of  self-denial,  to  persuade  themselves 
that  what  others  wish  to  clo  ought  not 
to  annoy  them,  it  was  very  difficult  to 
know  whether  the  practice  was  or  was 
not  offensive  to  any  particular  lady,  and 
therefore — therefore — 

The  youth  seemed  to  be  unable  to 
draw  the  conclusion. 

"  Therefore,"  said  the  mentor,  "  it  is 
well  to  remember  the  old  rule  in 
whist." 

"  Which  is — ?"  asked  Apollodorus. 

"  When  in  doubt,  trump  the  trick." 

"  But  what  is  the  special  application 
of  that  rule  to  this  case  ?" 


84  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

"  Precisely  this,  that  the  doubting 
smoker  should  follow  the  advice  of 
Punch  to  those  about  to  marry." 

"  Which  is—?"  asked  Apollodorus. 

"  Don't." 

(September,  1883) 


DUELLING 

TWENTY-FIVE  years  ago,  at  the  table 
of  a  gentleman  whose  father  had  fallen 
in  a  duel,  the  conversation  fell  upon 
duelling,  and  after  it  had  proceeded  for 
some  time  the  host  remarked,  emphati 
cally,  that  there  were  occasions  when  it 
was  a  man's  solemn  duty  to  fight.  The 
personal  reference  was  too  significant 
to  permit  further  insistence  at  that  table 
that  duelling  was  criminal  folly,  and  the 
subject  of  conversation  was  changed. 

The  host,  however,  had  only  reiter 
ated  the  familiar  view  of  General  Ham 
ilton.  His  plea  was,  that  in  the  state 
of  public  opinion  at  the  time  when 
Burr  challenged  him,  to  refuse  to  fight 


86  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

under  circumstances  which  by  the  "  code 
of  honor"  authorized  a  challenge,  was 
to  accept  a  brand  of  cowardice  and  of 
a  want  of  gentlemanly  feeling,  which 
would  banish  him  to  a  moral  and  social 
Coventry,  and  throw  a  cloud  of  discredit 
upon  his  family.  So  Hamilton,  one  of 
the  bravest  men  and  one  of  the  acutest 
intellects  of  his  time,  permitted  a  worth 
less  fellow  to  murder  him.  Yet  there 
is  no  doubt  that  he  stated  accurately 
the  general  feeling  of  the  social  circle 
in  which  he  lived.  There  was  probably 
not  a  conspicuous  member  of  that  so 
ciety  who  was  of  military  antecedents 
who  would  not  have  challenged  any 
man  who  had  said  of  him  what  Hamil 
ton  had  said  of  Burr.  Hamilton  dis 
dained  explanation  or  recantation,  and 
the  result  was  accepted  as  tragical,  but 
in  a  certain  sense  inevitable. 

Yet  that  result  aroused  public  senti- 


Duelling  87 

ment  to  the  atrocity  of  this  barbarous 
survival  of  the  ordeal  of  private  battle. 
That  one  of  the  most  justly  renowned 
of  public  men,  of  unsurpassed  ability, 
should  be  shot  to  death  like  a  mad  dog, 
because  he  had  expressed  the  general 
feeling  about  an  unprincipled  schemer, 
was  an  exasperating  public  misfortune. 
But  that  he  should  have  been  murdered 
in  deference  to  a  practice  which  was 
approved  in  the  best  society,  yet  which 
placed  every  other  valuable  life  at  the 
mercy  of  any  wily  vagabond,  was  a  pub 
lic  peril.  From  that  day  to  this  there 
has  been  no  duel  which  could  be  said 
to  have  commanded  public  sympathy 
or  approval.  From  the  bright  June 
morning,  eighty  years  ago,  when  Ham 
ilton  fell  at  Weehawken,  to  the  June  of 
this  year,  when  two  foolish  men  shot  at 
each  other  in  Virginia,  there  has  been 
a  steady  and  complete  change  of  public 


88  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

opinion,  and  the  performance  of  this 
year  was  received  with  almost  universal 
contempt,  and  with  indignant  censure 
of  a  dilatory  police. 

The  most  celebrated  duel  in  this 
country  since  that  of  Hamilton  and 
Burr  was  the  encounter  between  Com 
modores  Decatur  and  Barren,  in  1820, 
near  Washington,  in  which  Decatur, 
like  Hamilton,  was  mortally  wounded, 
and  likewise  lived  but  a  few  hours. 
The  quarrel  was  one  of  professional,  as 
Burr's  of  political,  jealousy.  But  as  the 
only  conceivable  advantage  of  the  Ham 
ilton  duel  lay  in  its  arousing  the  public 
mind  to  the  barbarity  of  duelling,  the 
only  gain  from  the  Decatur  duel  was 
that  it  confirmed  this  conviction.  In 
both  instances  there  was  an  unspeaka 
ble  shock  to  the  country  and  infinite 
domestic  anguish.  Nothing  else  was 
achieved.  Neither  general  manners 


Duelling  89 

nor  morals  were  improved,  nor  was  the 
fame  of  either  combatant  heightened, 
nor  public  confidence  in  the  men  or 
admiration  of  their  public  services  in 
creased.  In  both  cases  it  was  a  calam 
ity  alleviated  solely  by  the  resolution 
which  it  awakened  that  such  calamities 
should  not  occur  again. 

Such  a  resolution,  indeed,  could  not 
at  once  prevail,  and  eighteen  years  after 
Decatur  was  killed,  Jonathan  Cilley,  of 
Maine,  was  killed  in  a  duel  at  Washing 
ton  by  William  J.  Graves,  of  Kentucky. 
This  event  occurred  forty-five  years  ago, 
but  the  outcry  with  which  it  was  re 
ceived  even  at  that  time  —  one  of  the 
newspaper  moralists  lapsing  into  rhyme 
as  he  deplored  the  cruel  custom  which 
led  excellent  men  to  the  fatal  field, 

"where  Cilleys  meet  their  Graves" — 

and  the  practical  disappearance  of  Mr. 


90  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

Graves  from  public  life,  showed  how 
deep  and  strong  was  the  public  con 
demnation,  and  how  radically  the  gen 
eral  view  of  the  duel  was  changed. 

Even  in  the  burning  height  of  the 
political  and  sectional  animosity  of  1856, 
when  Brooks  had  assaulted  Charles 
Sumner,  the  challenge  of  Brooks  by 
some  of  Sumner's  friends  met  with  lit 
tle  public  sympathy.  During  the  ex 
citement  the  Easy  Chair  met  the  late 
Count  Gurowski,  who  was  a  constant 
and  devoted  friend  of  Mr.  Sumner,  but 
an  old-world  man,  with  all  the  heredi 
tary  social  prejudices  of  the  old  world. 
The  count  was  furious  that  such  a 
dastardly  blow  had  not  been  avenged. 
"  Has  he  no  friends  ?"  he  exclaimed. 
"  Is  there  no  honor  left  in  your  coun 
try?"  And,  as  if  he  would  burst  with 
indignant  impatience,  he  shook  both 
his  fists  in  the  air,  and  thundered  out, 


Duelling  91 

"  Good  God !   will   not  somebody  chal 
lenge  anybody?" 

No,  that  time  is  passed.  The  elderly 
club  dude  may  lament  the  decay  of  the 
good  old  code  of  honor  —  a  word  of 
which  he  has  a  very  ludicrous  concep 
tion —  as  Major  Pendennis,  when  he 
pulled  off  his  wig,  and  took  out  his 
false  teeth,  and  removed  the  padded 
calves  of  his  legs,  used  to  hope  that  the 
world  was  not  sinking  into  shams  in  its 
old  age.  Quarrelling  editors  may  win 
a  morning's  notoriety  by  stealing  to  the 
field,  furnishing  a  paragraph  for  the  re 
porters,  and  running  away  from  the 
police.  But  they  gain  only  the  unsa 
vory  notoriety  of  the  man  in  a  curled 
wig  and  flowered  waistcoat  and  huge 
flapped  coat  of  the  last  century  who 
used  to  parade  Broadway.  The  cos 
tume  was  merely  an  advertisement,  and 
of  very  contemptible  wares.  The  man 


92  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

who  fights  a  duel  to-day  excites  but 
one  comment.  Should  he  escape,  he 
is  ridiculous.  Should  he  fall,  the  com 
mon  opinion  of  enlightened  mankind 
writes  upon  his  head -stone,  "He  died 
as  the  fool  dieth." 

(September,  1883) 


NEWSPAPER   ETHICS 


NEWSPAPER  manners  and  morals  hard 
ly  fall  into  the  category  of  minor  man 
ners  and  morals,  which  are  supposed  to 
be  the  especial  care  of  the  Easy  Chair, 
but  there  are  frequent  texts  upon  which 
the  preacher  might  dilate,  and  push  a 
discourse  upon  the  subject  even  to  the 
fifteenthly.  Indeed,  in  this  hot  time 
of  an  opening  election  campaign,  the 
stress  of  the  contest  is  so  severe  that 
the  first  condition  of  a  good  newspa 
per  is  sometimes  frightfully  maltreat 
ed.  The  first  duty  of  a  newspaper  is 
to  tell  the  news ;  to  tell  it  fairly,  hon 
estly,  and  accurately,  which  are  here 


94  -Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

only  differing  aspects  of  the  same  ad 
verb.  "  Cooking  the  news  "  is  the  worst 
use  to  which  cooking  and  news  can  be 
put.  The  old  divine  spoke  truly,  if 
with  exceeding  care,  in  saying,  "  It  has 
been  sometimes  observed  that  men  will 
lie."  So  it  has  been  sometimes  suspect 
ed  that  newspapers  will  cook  the  news. 
A  courteous  interviewer  called  upon 
a  gentleman  to  obtain  his  opinions,  let 
us  say,  upon  the  smelt  fishery.  After 
the  usual  civilites  upon  such  occasions, 
the  interviewer  remarked,  with  conscious 
pride :  "  The  paper  that  I  represent  and 
you,  sir,  do  not  agree  upon  the  great 
smelt  question.  But  it  is  a  newspaper. 
It  prints  the  facts.  It  does  not  pervert 
them  for  its  own  purpose,  and  it  finds 
its  account  in  it.  You  may  be  sure  that 
whatever  you  may  say  will  be  reproduced 
exactly  as  you  say  it.  This  is  the  news 
department.  Meanwhile  the  editorial 


Newspaper  Ethics  95 

department  will  make  such  comments 
upon  the  news  as  it  chooses."  This  was 
fair,  and  the  interviewer  kept  his  word. 
The  opinions  might  be  editorially  ridi 
culed  from  the  other  smelt  point  of  view, 
and  they  probably  were  so.  But  the 
reader  of  the  paper  could  judge  between 
the  opinion  and  the  comment. 

Now  an  interview  is  no  more  news 
than  much  else  that  is  printed  in  a  pa 
per,  and  it  is  no  more  pardonable  to 
misrepresent  other  facts  than  to  distort 
the  opinions  of  the  victim  of  an  inter 
view.  Yet  it  has  been  possible  at  times 
to  read  in  the  newspapers  of  the  same 
day  accounts  of  the  same  proceedings 
of — of — let  us  say,  as  this  is  election 
time — of  a  political  convention.  The 
Banner  informs  us  that  the  spirit  was 
unmistakable,  and  the  opinion  most  de 
cided  in  favor  of  Jones.  True,  the  con 
vention  voted,  by  nine  hundred  to  four, 


96  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

for  Smith,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
Jones  is  the  name  written  on  the  popu 
lar  heart.  The  Standard,  on  the  other 
hand,  proclaims  that  the  popular  heart 
is  engraved  all  over  with  the  inspiring 
name  of  Smith,  and  that  it  is  impossi 
ble  to  find  any  trace  of  feeling  for  Jones, 
except,  possibly,  in  the  case  of  one  del 
egate,  who  is  probably  an  idiot  or  a 
lunatic.  This  is  gravely  served  up  as 
news,  and  the  papers  pay  for  it.  They 
even  hire  men  to  write  this,  and  pay 
them  for  it.  How  Ude  and  Careme 
would  have  disdained  this  kind  of  cook 
ery!  It  is  questionable  whether  hang 
ing  is  not  a  better  use  to  put  a  man  to 
than  cooking  news.  Sir  Henry  Wotton 
defined  an  ambassador  as  an  honest  man 
sent  to  lie  abroad  for  the  commonwealth. 
This  kind  of  purveyor,  however,  does 
not  lie  for  his  country,  but  for  a  party 
or  a  person. 


Newspaper  Ethics  97 

It  is  done  with  a  purpose,  the  purpose 
of  influencing  other  action.  It  is  in 
tended  to  swell  the  paean  for  Jones  or 
for  Smith,  and  to  procure  results  under 
false  pretences.  Procuring  goods  un 
der  false  pretences  is  a  crime,  but  every 
body  is  supposed  to  read  the  newspapers 
at  his  own  risk.  Has  the  reader  yet  to 
learn  that  newspapers  are  very  human  ? 
A  paper,  for  instance,  takes  a  position 
upon  the  Jones  or  Smith  question.  It 
decides,  upon  all  the  information  it  can 
obtain,  and  by  its  own  deliberate  judg 
ment,  that  Jones  is  the  coming  man,  or 
("  it  has  been  observed  that  men  will 
sometimes  lie  ")  it  has  illicit  reasons  for 
the  success  of  Smith.  Having  thus 
taken  its  course,  it  cooks  all  the  news 
upon  the  Smith  and  Jones  controversy, 
in  order  that  by  encouraging  the  Jones- 
ites  or  the  Smithians,  according  to  the 
color  that  it  wears,  it  may  promote  the 

7 


98  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

success  of  the  side  upon  which  its  opin 
ion  has  been  staked.  It  is  a  ludicrous 
and  desperate  game,  but  it  is  certainly 
not  the  honest  collection  and  diffusion 
of  news.  It  is  a  losing  game  also,  be 
cause,  whatever  the  sympathies  of  the 
reader,  he  does  not  care  to  be  foolishly 
deceived  about  the  situation.  If  he  is 
told  day  after  day  that  Smith  is  im 
mensely  ahead  and  has  a  clear  field,  he 
is  terribly  shaken  by  the  shock  of  learn 
ing  at  the  final  moment  that  he  has 
been  cheated  from  the  beginning,  and 
that  poor  Smith  is  dead  upon  the  field 
of  dishonor. 

Everybody  is  willing  to  undertake 
everybody  else's  business,  and  an  Easy 
Chair  naturally  supposes,  therefore,  that 
it  could  show  the  able  editor  a  plan  of 
securing  and  retaining  a  large  audience. 
The  plan  would  be  that  described  by 
the  urbane  reporter  as  the  plan  of  his 


Newspaper  Ethics  99 

own  paper.  It  is  nothing  else  than 
truth-telling  in  the  news  column,  and 
the  peremptory  punishment  of  all  crim 
inals  who  cook  the  news,  and  "write  up" 
the  situation,  not  as  it  is,  but  as  the  pa 
per  wishes  it  to  be.  This  is  more  than 
an  affair  of  the  private  wishes  or  prefer 
ences  of  the  paper.  To  cook  the  news 
is  a  public  wrong,  and  a  violation  of  the 
moral  contract  which  the  newspaper 
makes  with  the  public  to  supply  the 
news,  and  to  use  every  reasonable  effort 
to  obtain  it,  not  to  manufacture  it,  either 
in  the  office  or  by  correspondence. 

(July,  1880) 


If,  as  a  New  York  paper  recently 
said,  the  journalist  is  superseding  the 
orator,  it  is  full  time  for  the  work  upon 
Journals  and  Journalism,  which  has 


TOO  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

been  lately  issued  in  London.  The 
New  York  writer  holds  that  in  our  polit 
ical  contests  the  "  campaign  speech  "  is 
not  intended  or  adapted  to  persuade  or 
convert  opponents,  but  merely  to  stimu 
late  and  encourage  friends.  The  party 
meetings  on  each  side,  he  thinks,  are 
composed  of  partisans,  and  the  more  ex 
travagant  the  assertion  and  the  more 
unsparing  the  denunciation  of  "  the  en 
emy,"  the  more  rapturous  the  enthusi 
asm  of  the  audience.  In  fact,  his  theory 
of  campaign  speeches  is  that  they  are 
merely  the  addresses  of  generals  to  their 
armies  on  the  eve  of  battle,  which  are 
not  arguments,  since  argument  is  not 
needed,  but  mere  urgent  appeals  to  par 
ty  feeling.  "  Thirty  centuries  look  down 
from  yonder  Pyramid  "  is  the  Napoleon 
ic  tone  of  the  campaign  speech. 

As  an  election  is  an  appeal  to   the 
final  tribunal  of  the  popular  judgment, 


Newspaper  Ethics  101 

the  apparent  object  of  election  oratory 
is  to  affect  the  popular  decision.  But 
this,  the  journalist  asserts^  is.  not  .done 
by  the  orator,  tor  'ther  reason  just'stated, 
but  by  the  journal.  The  newspaper  ad 
dresses  the  voter,  not  with  rhetorical 
periods  and  vapid  declamation,  but  with 
facts  and  figures  and  arguments  which 
the  voter  can  verify  and  ponder  at  his 
leisure,  and  not  under  the  excitement  or 
the  tedium  of  a  spoken  harangue.  The 
newspaper,  also,  unless  it  be  a  mere 
party  "  organ,"  is  candid  to  the  other 
side,  and  states  the  situation  fairly. 
Moreover,  the  exigencies  of  a  daily  is 
sue  and  of  great  space  to  fill  produce  a 
fulness  and  variety  of  information  and  of 
argument  which  are  really  the  source  of 
most  of  the  speeches,  so  that  the  orator 
repeats  to  his  audience  an  imperfect  ab 
stract  of  a  complete  and  ample  plea,  and 
the  orator,  it  is  asserted,  would  often 


IO2  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

serve  his  cause  infinitely  better  by  read 
ing  a  'carefully-  written  newspaper  arti 
cle  than,  by  pauring  .out?  his  loose  and 
illogical  declamation. 

But  the  argument  for  the  newspaper 
can  be  pushed  still  further.  Since  pho 
nographic  reporting  has  become  univer 
sal,  and  the  speaker  is  conscious  that 
his  very  words  will  be  spread  the  next- 
morning  before  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  readers,  it  is  of  those  readers,  and  not 
of  the  thousand  hearers  before  him,  of 
whom  he  thinks,  and  for  whom  his  ad 
dress  is  really  prepared.  Formerly  a 
single  charge  was  all  that  was  needed 
for  the  fusillade  of  a  whole  political 
campaign.  The  speech  that  was  origi 
nally  carefully  prepared  was  known 
practically  only  to  the  audience  that 
heard  it.  It  grew  better  and  brighter 
with  the  attrition  of  repeated  delivery, 
and  was  fresh  and  new  to  every  new 


Newspaper  Ethics  103 

audience.  But  now,  when  delivered  to 
an  audience,  it  is  spoken  to  the  whole 
country.  It  is  often  in  type  before  it  is 
uttered,  so  that  the  orator  is  in  fact  re 
peating  the  article  of  to-morrow  morn 
ing.  The  result  is  good  so  far  as  it 
compels  him  to  precision  of  statement, 
but  it  inevitably  suggests  the  question 
whether  the  newspaper  is  not  correct  in 
its  assertion  that  the  great  object  of  the 
oration  is  accomplished  not  by  the  ora 
tor,  but  by  the  writer. 

But  this,  after  all,  is  like  asking 
whether  a  chromo  copy  of  a  great  pict 
ure  does  not  supersede  painting,  and 
prove  it  to  be  an  antiquated  or  obsolete 
art.  Oratory  is  an  art,  and  its  peculiar 
charm  and  power  cannot  be  superseded 
by  any  other  art.  Great  orations  are 
now  prepared  with  care,  and  may  be 
printed  word  for  word.  But  the  reading 
cannot  produce  the  impression  of  the 


104  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

hearing.  We  can  all  read  the  words 
that  Webster  spoke  on  Bunker  Hill  at 
the  laying  of  the  corner-stone  of  the 
monument  fifty  years  after  the  battle. 
But  those  who  saw  him  standing  there, 
in  his  majestic  prime,  and  speaking  to 
that  vast  throng,  heard  and  saw  and  felt 
something  that  we  cannot  know.  The 
ordinary  stump  speech  which  imperfect 
ly  echoes  a  leading  article  can  well  be 
spared.  But  the  speech  of  an  orator 
still  remains  a  work  of  art,  the  words  of 
which  may  be  accurately  lithographed, 
while  the  spirit  and  glow  and  inspira 
tion  of  utterance  which  made  it  a  work 
of  art  cannot  be  reproduced. 

The  general  statement  of  the  critic, 
however,  remains  true,  and  the  effective 
work  of  a  political  campaign  is  certainly 
done  by  the  newspaper.  The  newspa 
per  is  of  two  kinds,  again — that  which 
shows  exclusively  the  virtue  and  ad  van- 


Newspaper  Ethics  105 

tage  of  the  party  it  favors,  and  that 
which  aims  to  be  judicial  and  impartial. 
The  tendency  of  the  first  kind  is  obvi 
ous  enough,  but  that  of  the  last  is  not 
less  positive  if  less  obvious.  The  ten 
dency  of  the  independent  newspaper  is 
to  good-natured  indifference.  The  very 
ardor,  often  intemperate  and  indiscreet, 
with  which  a  side  is  advocated,  preju 
dices  such  a  paper  against  the  cause  it 
self.  Because  the  hot  orator  exclaims 
that  the  success  of  the  adversary  would 
ruin  the  country,  the  independent  Men 
tor  gayly  suggests  that  the  country  is 
not  so  easily  ruined,  and  that  such  an 
argument  is  a  reason  for  voting  against 
the  orator.  The  position  that  in  a  party 
contest  it  is  six  on  one  side  and  half  a 
dozen  on  the  other  is  too  much  akin  to 
the  doctrine  that  naught  is  everything 
and  everything  is  naught  to  be  very 
persuasive  with  men  who  are  really  in 


io6  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

earnest.  Such  a  position  in  public  af 
fairs  inevitably,  and  often  very  unjustly 
to  them,  produces  an  impression  of  want 
of  hearty  conviction,  which  paralyzes 
influence  as  effectually  as  the  evident 
prejudice  and  partiality  of  the  party 
advocate.  Thorough  independence  is 
perfectly  compatible  with  the  strongest 
conviction  that  the  public  welfare  will 
be  best  promoted  by  the  success  of  this 
or  that  party.  Such  independence  crit 
icises  its  own  party  and  partisans,  but  it 
would  not  have  wavered  in  the  support 
of  the  Revolution  because  Gates  and 
Conway  were  intriguers,  and  Charles 
Lee  an  adventurer,  and  it  would  have 
sustained  Sir  Robert  Walpole  although 
he  would  not  repeal  the  Corporation 
and  Test  laws,  and  withdrew  his  excise 
act. 

Journalism,  if  it  be  true  that  it  really 
shapes  the  policy  of  nations,  well  de- 


Newspaper  Ethics  107 

serves  to  be  treated  as  thoughtfully  as 
Mr.  "  John  Oldcastle  "  apparently  treats 
it  in  the  book  we  have  mentioned,  for  it 
is  the  most  exacting  of  professions  in 
the  ready  use  of  various  knowledge. 
Mr.  Anthony  Trollope  says  that  any 
body  can  set  up  the  business  or  profes 
sion  of  literature  who  can  command  a 
room,  a  table,  and  pen,  ink,  and  paper. 
Would  he  also  say  that  any  man  may 
set  up  the  trade  of  an  artist  who  can 
buy  an  easel,  a  palette,  a  few  brushes, 
and  some  colors?  It  can  be  done,  in 
deed,  but  only  as  a  man  who  can  hire  a 
boat  may  set  up  for  an  East  India  mer 
chant. 

(December,  1880) 


io8  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 


III 

"  If  you  find  that  you  have  no  case," 
the  old  lawyer  is  reported  to  have  said 
to  the  young,  "abuse  the  plaintiff's  at 
torney,"  and  Judge  Martin  Grover,  of 
New  York,  used  to  say  that  it  was  ap 
parently  a  great  relief  to  a  lawyer  who 
had  lost  a  case  to  betake  himself  to  the 
nearest  tavern  and  swear  at  the  court. 
Abuse,  in  any  event,  seems  to  have  been 
regarded  by  both  of  these  authorities  as 
a  consolation  in  defeat.  It  is  but  car 
rying  the  theory  a  step  further  to  resort 
to  abuse  in  argument.  Timon,  who  is 
a  club  cynic — which  is  perhaps  the  most 
useless  specimen  of  humanity  —  says 
that  'pon  his  honor  nothing  entertains 
him  more  than  to  see  how  little  argu 
ment  goes  to  the  discussion  of  any  ques 
tion,  and  how  immediate  is  the  recourse 


Newspaper  Ethics  109 

to  blackguardism.  "  The  other  day,"  he 
said,  recently,  "  I  was  sitting  in  the 
smoking-room,  and  Blunt  and  Sharp  be 
gan  to  talk  about  yachts.  Sharp  thinks 
that  he  knows  all  that  can  be  known  of 
yachts,  and  Blunt  thinks  that  what  he 
thinks  is  unqualified  truth.  Sharp  made 
a  strong  assertion,  and  Blunt  smiled. 
It  was  that  lofty  smile  of  amused  pity 
and  superiority,  which  is,  I  suppose,  very 
exasperating.  Sharp  was  evidently  sur 
prised,  but  he  continued,  and  at  another 
observation  Blunt  looked  at  him,  and 
said,  simply, '  Ridiculous  !'  As  it  seemed 
to  me,"  said  Timon,  "  the  stronger  and 
truer  were  the  remarks  of  Sharp,  the 
more  Blunt's  tone  changed  from  con 
tempt  to  anger,  until  he  came  to  a  tor 
rent  of  vituperation,  under  which  Sharp 
retired  from  the  room  with  dignity. 

"  I  presume,"  said    the   cynic,  "  that 
Sharp   was   correct   upon   every  point. 


1 10  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

But  the  more  correct  Sharp  was,  the 
more  angry  Blunt  became.  It  was  very 
entertaining,  and  it  seems  to  me  very 
much  the  way  of  more  serious  dis 
cussion."  Timon  was  certainly  right, 
and  those  who  heard  his  remarks,  and 
have  since  then  seen  him  chuckling 
over  the  newspapers,  are  confident  it  is 
because  he  observes  in  them  the  same 
method  of  carrying  on  discussion.  Much 
public  debate  recalls  the  two  barbaric 
methods  of  warfare,  which  consist  in 
making  a  loud  noise  and  in  emitting 
vile  odors.  A  member  of  Congress 
pours  out  a  flood  of  denunciatory  words 
in  the  utmost  rhetorical  confusion,  and 
seems  to  suppose  that  he  has  dismayed 
his  opponent  because  he  has  made  a 
tremendous  noise.  He  is  only  an  over 
grown  boy,  who,  like  some  other  boys, 
imagines  that  he  is  very  heroic  when 
he  shakes  his  head,  and  pouts  his  lip, 


Newspaper  Ethics  1 1 1 

and  clinches  his  fist,  and  "  calls  names  " 
in  a  shrill  and  rasping  tone.  Other 
members,  who  ought  to  know  better, 
pretend  to  regard  his  performances  as 
worthy  of  applause,  and  metaphorically 
pat  him  on  the  back  and  cry,  "'St,  boy!" 
They  only  share  —  and  in  a  greater 
degree,  because  they  know  better — the 
contempt  with  which  he  is  regarded. 

In  the  same  way  a  newspaper  writer 
attacks  views  which  are  not  acceptable 
to  him,  not  with  argument,  or  satire,  or 
wit,  or  direct  refutation,  but  by  meta 
phorically  emptying  slops,  and  directing 
whirlwinds  of  bad  smells  upon  their  sup 
porters.  The  intention  seems  to  be,  not 
to  confute  the  arguments,  but  to  disgust 
the  advocates.  The  proceeding  is  a  con 
fession  that  the  views  are  so  evidently 
correct  that  they  will  inevitably  prevail 
unless  their  supporters  can  be  driven 
away.  This  is  an  ingenious  policy,  for 


ii2  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

guns  certainly  cannot  be  served  if  the 
gunners  are  dispersed.  Men  shrink  from 
ridicule  and  ludicrous  publicity.  How 
ever  conscious  of  rectitude  a  man  may 
be,  it  is  exceedingly  disagreeable  for  him 
to  see  the  dead -walls  and  pavements 
covered  with  posters  proclaiming  that 
he  is  a  liar  and  a  fool.  If  he  recoils,  the 
enemy  laughs  in  triumph ;  if  he  is  in 
different,  there  is  a  fresh  whirlwind. 

A  public  man  wrote  recently  to  a 
friend  that  he  had  seen  an  attack  upon 
his  conduct  in  a  great  journal,  and  had 
asked  his  lawyer  to  take  the  necessary 
legal  steps  to  bring  the  offender  to  jus 
tice.  His  friend  replied  that  he  had 
seen  the  attack,  but  that  it  had  no  more 
effect  upon  him  than  the  smells  from 
Newtown  Creek.  They  were  very  dis 
gusting,  but  that  was  all.  This  is  the 
inevitable  result  of  blackguardism.  The 
newspaper  reader,  as  he  sees  that  one 


Newspaper  Ethics  113 

man  supports  one  measure  because  his 
wife's  uncle  is  interested  in  it,  and  an 
other  man  another  measure  to  gratify 
his  grudge  against  a  rival,  gradually 
learns  from  his  daily  morning  mentor 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  honor, 
decency,  or  public  spirit  in  public  af 
fairs  ;  he  chuckles  with  the  club  cynic, 
although  for  a  very  different  reason,  and 
forgets  the  contents  of  one  column  as 
he  begins  upon  the  next.  If  a  man 
covers  his  milk  toast,  his  breakfast,  his 
lunch,  dinner,  and  supper  with  a  coat 
ing  of  Cayenne  pepper,  the  pepper  be 
comes  as  things  in  general  became  to 
Mr.  Toots — of  no  consequence. 

This  kind  of  fury  in  personal  denun 
ciation  is  not  force,  as  young  writers 
suppose ;  it  is  feebleness.  Wit,  satire, 
brilliant  sarcasm,  are,  indeed,  legitimate 
weapons.  It  was  these  which  Sydney 
Smith  wielded  in  the  early  Edinburgh 

8 


1 14  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

Review.  But  "  calling  names,"  and  echo 
ing  the  commonplaces  of  affected  con 
tempt,  that  is  too  weak  even  for  Timon 
to  chuckle  over,  except  as  evidence  of 
mental  vacuity.  The  real  object  in  hon 
est  controversy  is  to  defeat  your  oppo 
nent  and  leave  him  a  friend.  But  the 
Newtown  Creek  method  is  fatal  to  such 
a  result.  Of  course  that  method  often 
apparently  wins.  But  it  always  fails 
when  directed  against  a  resolute  and 
earnest  purpose.  The  great  causes  per 
sist  through  seeming  defeat  to  victory. 
But  to  oppose  them  with  sneers  and 
blackguardism  is  to  affect  to  dam  Ni 
agara  with  a  piece  of  paper.  The  crafty 
old  lawyer  advised  the  younger  to  re 
serve  his  abuse  until  he  felt  that  he  had 
no  case.  Judge  Grover  remarked  that 
it  was  when  the  case  was  lost  that  the 
profanity  began. 

(September,  1882) 


Newspaper  Ethics  115 


IV 

There  is  a  delicate  question  in  news 
paper  ethics  which  is  sometimes  widely 
discussed,  namely,  whether  "journalism" 
may  be  regarded  as  a  distinct  profession 
which  has  a  moral  standard  of  its  own. 
The  question  arises  when  an  editorial 
writer  transfers  his  services  from  one 
journal  to  another  of  different  political 
opinions.  Is  a  man  justified  in  arguing 
strenuously  for  free  trade  to-day  and  for 
protection  to-morrow?  Are  political 
questions  and  measures  of  public  policy 
merely  points  of  law  upon  which  an  ed 
itor  is  an  advocate  to  be  retained  indif 
ferently  and  with  equal  morality  upon 
either  side  ? 

This  question  may  be  illuminated  by 
another.  Would  John  Bright  be  a  man 
of  equal  renown,  character,  and  weight 


n6  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

of  influence  if,  being  an  adherent  of 
peace  principles,  he  had  remained  in  an 
administration  whose  policy  was  war? 
This  question  will  be  thought  to  beg 
the  whole  question.  But  does  it  ?  Must 
it  not  be  assumed  that  a  man  of  adequate 
ability  for  the  proper  discussion  of  polit 
ical  questions  must  have  positive  polit 
ical  convictions,  and  can  a  man  who  has 
such  convictions  honorably  devote  him 
self  to  discrediting  them,  and  to  defeat 
ing  the  policy  which  they  demand,  un 
der  the  plea  that  he  has  professionally 
accepted  a  retainer  or  a  salary  to  do  so  ? 
Would  his  arguments  have  any  moral 
weight  if  they  were  known  to  be  those 
of  a  man  who  was  not  himself  convinced 
by  them  ?  And  is  not  the  concealment 
of  the  fact  indispensable  to  the  value  of 
his  services? 

To  continue  this  interrogation :  is  not 
the   parallel   sought  to  be    established 


Newspaper  Ethics  117 

between  the  editorial  writer  and  the  law 
yer  vitiated  by  the  fact  that  it  is  univer 
sally  understood  that  a  lawyer's  service  is 
perfunctory  and  official ;  that  he  takes 
one  side  rather  than  another  because  he 
is  paid  for  it,  and  because  that  is  the 
condition  of  his  profession,  and  that 
that  condition  springs  from  the  nature 
of  legal  procedure,  society  not  choosing 
to  take  life  or  to  inflict  punishment  of 
any  kind  until  the  whole  case  has  been 
stated  according  to  certain  stipulated 
forms  ?  For  this  reason  the  advocate 
who  defends  a  criminal  is  not  supposed 
necessarily  to  believe  him  to  be  in 
nocent.  But  no  such  reason  existing  in 
the  case  of  the  editor,  is  it  not  an  equal 
ly  universal  understanding  that  an  edi 
tor  does  honestly  and  personally  hold 
the  view  that  he  presents  and  defends  ? 
For  instance,  the  Times  in  New  York  is 
a  Republican  and  free-trade  journal.  If 


n8  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

it  should  suddenly  appear  some  morning 
as  a  Democratic  and  protectionist  paper, 
would  not  the  general  conclusion  be 
that  it  had  changed  hands  ?  But  if  it 
should  be  announced  that  it  was  in  the 
same  hands,  and  had  changed  its  views 
because  of  a  pecuniary  arrangement, 
could  the  Times  continue  to  have  the 
same  standing  and  influence  which  it 
has  now  ? 

A  distinction  may  be  attempted  be 
tween  the  owner  of  a  paper  and  the  edi 
tor.  But  for  the  public  are  they  not 
practically  the  same  ?  It  is  not,  in  fact, 
the  owner  or  the  editor,  it  is  the  paper, 
which  is  known  to  the  public.  If  the 
public  considers  at  all  the  probable  rela 
tion  of  the  owner  and  editor,  it  necessa 
rily  assumes  their  harmony,  because  it 
does  not  suppose  that  an  owner  would 
employ  an  editor  who  is  injuring  the 
property,  and  if  the  paper  flourishes  un- 


Newspaper  Ethics  119 

der  the  editor,  it  is  because  the  owner 
yields  his  private  opinion  to  the  editor's, 
if  they  happen  to  differ,  so  that  there  is 
no  discord.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
paper  flags  and  fails,  and  the  owner,  to 
rescue  his  property,  employs  another 
editor,  who  holds  other  views,  and 
changes  the  tone  of  the  paper,  the  result 
is  the  same  so  far  as  the  public  is  con 
cerned.  The  profit  of  the  paper  may  in 
crease,  but  its  power  and  influence  sure 
ly  decline.  In  the  illustration  that  we 
have  supposed,  the  proprietorship  of  the 
Times  might  decide  that  a  Democrat 
ic  and  protection  paper  would  have 
a  larger  sale  and  greatly  increase  the 
profit.  But  could  the  change  be  made 
without  a  terrible  blow  to  the  character 
and  influence  of  the  paper  ?  Now  why 
is  not  an  editor  in  the  same  position  ? 
He  has  a  certain  standing,  and  he  holds 
certain  views,  like  the  paper.  The  paper 


I2O  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

changes  its  tone  for  a  price.  He  does 
the  same  thing.  The  paper  loses  char 
acter  and  influence.  Why  does  not  he  ? 
Journalism  is  not  a  profession  in  the 
sense  claimed.  It  does  not  demand  a 
certain  course  of  study,  which  is  finally 
tested  by  an  examination  and  certified 
by  a  degree.  It  is  a  pursuit  rather  than 
a  profession.  Of  course  special  knowl 
edge  in  particular  branches  of  informa 
tion  is  of  the  highest  value,  and  indeed 
essential  to  satisfactory  editorial  writing, 
as  to  all  other  public  exposition.  There 
are  also  certain  details  of  the  collection 
of  news,  the  organization  of  correspond 
ence,  and  the  "  make  up  "  of  the  paper, 
the  successful  management  of  which 
depends  upon  an  energetic  executive 
faculty,  which  is  desirable  in  every  pur 
suit.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  an  editor, 
like  the  late  Mr.  Delane  of  the  London 
Times,  should  not  write  himself,  but  se- 


Newspaper  Ethics  121 

lect  the  topics  and  procure  the  writing 
upon  them  by  others.  And  so  long  as  a 
man  is  merely  an  anonymous  writer  for 
a  paper,  so  long  as  he  writes  to  sustain 
the  views  of  the  paper,  his  actual  opin 
ions,  being  unknown  to  the  reader,  do 
not  affect  the  power  of  the  paper.  Such 
a  man,  indeed,  may  write  at  the  same 
time  upon  both  sides  of  the  same  ques 
tion  for  different  papers.  But  if  he 
have  any  convictions  or  opinions  upon 
the  subject,  he  is  with  one  hand  con 
sciously  injuring  what  he  believes  to  be 
the  truth,  and  a  man  cannot  do  that 
without  serious  harm  to  himself.  If  he 
have  no  convictions,  his  influence  will 
vanish  the  moment  that  the  fact  is 
known. 

Such  strictures  do  not  apply  to  pa 
pers  which  expressly  renounce  convic 
tions,  and  blow  hot  or  cold  as  the 
chances  of  probable  profit  and  the  ap- 


122  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

parent  tenor  of  public  opinion  at  the 
moment  invite.  Such  papers,  properly 
speaking,  have  no  legitimate  influence 
whatever.  They  produce  a  certain  ef 
fect  by  mere  publicity,  and  reiteration, 
and  ridicule,  and  distortion  and  suppres 
sion  of  facts,  and  appeals  to  prejudice. 
There  is  a  legitimate  and  an  illegitimate 
power  of  the  press.  A  lion  and  a  skunk 
both  inspire  terror. 

But  a  paper  which  represents  convic 
tions,  and  promotes  a  public  policy  in 
accordance  with  them,  necessarily  im 
plies  sincerity  in  its  editorial  writing. 
The  public  assumes  that  among  papers 
of  all  opinions  the  writer  attaches  him 
self  to  one  with  which  he  agrees.  The 
nature  of  the  pursuit  is  such  that  he  can 
not  make  himself  a  free  lance  without 
running  the  risk  of  being  thought  an 
adventurer,  a  soldier  without  patriotism, 
a  citizen  without  convictions.  If  the  best 


Newspaper  Ethics  123 

American  press  did  not  represent  real 
convictions,  but  only  the  clever  ingenu 
ity  of  paid  advocates,  it  would  be  worth 
less  as  an  exponent  of  public  opinion, 
and  could  not  be  the  beneficent  power 
that  it  is. 

(October,  1882) 


One  public  man  in  a  recent  angry  al 
tercation  with  another  taunted  him  with 
elaborately  preparing  his  invective,  and 
some  notoriously  vituperative  speeches 
are  known  to  have  been  written  out  and 
printed  before  they  were  spoken.  Such 
cold  venom  is  undoubtedly  as  effective 
in  reading  as  the  hot  outbreak  of  the 
moment,  and  it  may  be  even  more  effec 
tive  in  the  delivery,  since  self-command 
is  as  useful  to  the  orator  as  to  the  actor. 
But  if  a  man  be  guilty  of  a  gross  of- 


124  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

fence  who  upon  a  dignified  scene  vio 
lates  the  self-restraint  and  respect  for 
the  company  which  are  not  only  becom 
ing,  but  so  much  assumed  that  whoever 
violates  the  requirement  is  felt  to  insult 
his  associates  and  the  public,  why  do  we 
not  consider  whether  every  scene  is  not 
too  dignified  for  mature  and  intelligent 
men  to  attempt  to  rival  in  blackguard 
ism  the  traditional  fishwives  of  Billings 
gate  ? 

If  an  orator  or  a  newspaper  conducts 
a  discussion  without  discharging  the 
fiercest  and  foulest  epithets  at  the  op 
ponent,  it  is  often  declared  to  be  tame 
and  feeble  and  indifferent.  But  to 
whom  and  to  what  does  vituperation 
appeal  ?  When  an  advocate  upon  the 
platform  shouts  until  he  is  very  hot  and 
very  red  that  the  supporter  of  protec 
tion  is  a  thief,  a  robber,  a  pampered  pet 
of  an  atrociously  diabolical  system,  he 


Newspaper  Ethics  125 

inflames  passion  and  prejudice,  indeed, 
to  the  highest  fury,  and  he  produces  a 
state  of  mind  which  is  inaccessible  to 
reason,  but  he  does  not  show  in  any  de 
gree  whatever  either  that  protection  is 
inexpedient  or  how  it  is  unjust.  In  the 
same  way,  to  assail  an  opponent  who  fa 
vors  revision  of  the  tariff  and  incidental 
protection  as  a  rascally  scoundrel  who 
is  trying  to  ruin  American  industry — as 
if  he  could  have  any  purpose  of  injuring 
himself  materially  and  fatally  —  is  ab 
surd.  The  tirade  merely  injures  the 
cause  which  the  blackguard  intends  to 
help.  But  the  man  who  carries  on  dis 
cussion  in  this  style  is  described  by 
other  professors  of  the  same  art  as  man 
ly  and  virile  and  hitting  from  the  shoul 
der,  and  he  comes  perhaps  to  think 
himself  a  doughty  champion  of  the 
right. 

The  weapon  that  demolishes  an  an- 


126  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

tagonist  and  an  argument  is  not  rhet 
oric,  but  truth.  This  accumulation  of 
"  bad  names "  and  ingenious  combina 
tion  of  scurrility  is  merely  rhetoric.  It 
serves  the  rhetorical  purpose,  but  it 
does  not  convince.  It  does  not  show 
the  hearer  or  reader  that  one  course 
is  more  expedient  than  another,  nor 
give  him  any  reason  whatever  for  any 
opinion  upon  the  subject.  Virility, 
vigor,  masculinity  of  mind,  and  es 
sential  force  in  debate  are  revealed 
in  quite  another  way.  If  an  American 
were  asked  to  mention  the  most  power 
ful  speech  ever  made  in  the  debates  of 
Congress,  he  would  probably  mention 
Mr.  Webster's  reply  to  Hayne.  It  con 
tained  the  great  statement  of  nationality 
and  the  argument  for  the  national  in 
terpretation  of  the  Constitution,  and  it 
was  spoken  in  the  course  of  a  famous 
controversy.  Let  any  man  read  it,  and 


Newspaper  Ethics  127 

ask  himself  whether  it  would  have 
gained  in  power,  in  effect,  in  weight, 
dignity,  or  character,  by  personal  invec 
tive  and  elaborate  vituperation  of  any 
kind  and  any  degree  whatever. 

The  truth  is  that  the  fury  which  is 
supposed  to  imply  force  is  the  conclu 
sive  proof  of  weakness.  The  familiar 
advice,  "  If  you  have  no  evidence,  abuse 
the  plaintiff's  attorney,"  contains  by  im 
plication  the  whole  philosophy  of  what 
is  called  the  manliness  and  force  of  the 
blackguard.  He  has  no  reason,  there 
fore  he  sneers.  He  has  no  argument, 
therefore  he  swears.  He  will  get  the 
laugh  upon  his  adversary  if  he  can,  for 
getting  that  those  who  laugh  at  the 
clown  may  also  despise  him. 

Of  wit,  humor,  satire,  sarcasm,  we  are 
not  speaking.  The  ordinary  blackguard 
ism  of  the  political  platform  and  press 
does  not  belong  to  that  category.  Cari- 


128  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

cature,  however,  easily  may.  There  are 
certain  pictures  in  American  caricature 
which  are  wit  made  visible.  They  are 
the  satire  of  instructive  truth.  Indeed, 
they  tell  to  the  eye  the  indisputable 
truth  as  words  cannot  easily  tell  it  to 
the  ear.  In  this  way  caricature  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  agents  in  public 
discussion.  But,  like  speech  or  writing, 
it  may  be  merely  blackguard.  The  in 
cisive  wit,  the  rich  humor,  the  withering 
satire  of  speech,  gain  all  their  point  and 
effect  from  the  truth.  They  have  no 
power  when  they  are  seen  to  be  false. 

So  it  is  with  caricature.  Nobody  can 
enjoy  it  more  than  its  subject  when  it 
is  merely  humorous ;  nobody  perceive 
so  surely  its  pungent  touch  of  truth ; 
nobody  disregard  more  completely  its 
mere  malice  and  falsehood.  True  wit 
and  humor,  whether  in  controversial 
letters  or  art,  whether  in  the  newspaper 


Newspaper  Ethics  129 

article  or  the  "  cartoon,"  as  we  now  call 
it,  often  reveal  to  the  subject  in  himself 
what  otherwise  he  might  not  have  sus 
pected.  It  is  very  conceivable  that  an 
actor,  seeing  a  really  clever  burlesque 
of  himself,  may  become  aware  of  ten 
dencies  or  peculiarities  or  faults  which 
otherwise  he  would  not  have  known, 
and  quietly  address  himself  to  their  cor 
rection. 

This  sanitary  service  of  humor  in 
every  form,  as  well  as  that  of  the  honest 
wrath  which  shakes  many  a  noble  sen 
tence  of  sinewy  English  as  a  mighty 
man-of-war  is  shaken  by  her  own  broad 
side,  is  something  wholly  apart  from  the 
billingsgate  and  blackguardism  which 
are  treated  as  if  they  were  real  forces. 
Publicity  itself,  as  the  Easy  Chair  has 
often  said,  has  a  certain  power,  and  to 
call  a  man  a  rascal  to  a  hundred  thou 
sand  persons  at  once  produces  an  unde- 

9 


130  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

niable  effect.  But  we  must  not  mistake 
it  for  what  it  is  not.  Being  false,  it  is 
not  an  effect  which  endures,  nor  does  it 
vex  the  equal  mind. 

It  is  the  fact  that  the  public  often 
seems  to  demand  that  kind  of  titillation, 
to  enjoy  fury  instead  of  force,  and  ridi 
cule  instead  of  reason,  which  suggests 
the  inquiry  whether,  if  self-restraint  and 
wise  discipline  are  desirable  for  every 
faculty  of  the  mind  and  body,  the  tongue 
and  hand  alone  should  be  allowed  to 
riot  in  wanton  excess.  If  even  the  le 
gitimate  superlative  must  be  handled, 
like  dynamite,  with  extreme  caution, 
blackguardism  of  every  degree  is  a  nui 
sance  to  be  summarily  discountenanced 
and  abated  by  those  who  know  the  dif 
ference  between  grandeur  and  bigness, 
between  Mercutio  and  Tony  Lumpkin, 
between  fair-play  and  foul. 

(September,  1888) 


Newspaper  Ethics  131 

VI 

The  Easy  Chair  has  been  asked 
whether  there  is  any  code  of  newspaper 
manners.  It  has  no  doubt  that  there 
is.  But  it  is  the  universal  code  of  cour 
tesy,  and  not  one  restricted  to  newspa 
pers.  Good  manners  in  civilized  society 
are  the  same  everywhere  and  in  all  rela 
tions.  A  newspaper  is  not  a  mystery. 
It  is  the  work  of  several  men  and  wom 
en,  and  their  manners  in  doing  the 
work  are  subject  to  the  same  principles 
that  govern  their  manners  in  society  or 
in  any  other  human  relation.  If  a  man 
is  a  gentleman,  he  does  not  cease  to 
be  one  because  he  enters  a  newspaper 
office,  and  it  would  seem  to  be  equally 
true  that  if  his  work  on  the  paper  does 
not  prove  to  be  that  of  a  gentleman,  it 
could  not  have  been  a  gentleman  who 
did  the  work. 


132  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

A  gentleman,  we  will  suppose,  does 
not  blackguard  his  neighbors,  nor  talk 
incessantly  about  himself  and  his 
achievements,  nor  behave  elsewhere  as 
he  would  be  ashamed  to  behave  in  his 
club  or  in  his  own  family.  If  a  gentle 
man  does  not  do  these  things,  of  course 
a  gentleman  does  not  do  them  in  a 
newspaper.  And  does  it  not  seem  to 
follow,  if  such  things  are  done  in  a 
newspaper,  and  are  traced  to  a  hand 
supposed  to  be  that  of  a  gentleman,  that 
there  has  been  some  mistake  about  the 
hand  ? 

Good  manners  are  essentially  a  dispo 
sition  which  moulds  conduct.  They 
can  be  feigned,  indeed,  as  gilt  counter 
feits  gold,  and  plate  silver.  But  the 
clearest  glass  is  not  diamond.  A  man 
may  smile  and  smile  and  be  a  villain. 
Scoundrels  are  sometimes  described  as 
of  gentlemanly  manners,  and  Lothario 


Newspaper  Ethics  133 

was  not  personally  a  boor.  But  he  was 
not  a  gentleman,  and  he  merely  affected 
good  manners.  A  gentleman,  indeed, 
may  sometimes  lose  his  temper  or  his 
self-control,  but  no  one  who  habitually 
does  it,  and  swears  and  rails  vociferous 
ly,  can  be  called  properly  by  that  name. 
Here  again  it  is  easy  to  apply  the  canon 
to  a  newspaper.  When  a  newspaper 
habitually  takes  an  insulting  tone,  and 
deliberately  falsifies,  whether  by  asser 
tion  of  an  untruth  or  by  a  distortion  and 
perversion  of  the  truth,  it  is  not  the 
work  of  a  gentleman,  and  if  the  writer 
be  responsible  for  the  tone  of  the  paper, 
the  manners  of  that  newspaper  are  not 
good  manners. 

But  there  is  no  uniformity  in  newspa 
per  manners,  as  there  is  none  elsewhere. 
Therefore  it  cannot  be  said  that  news 
papers,  as  a  whole,  are  either  well-man 
nered  or  unmannerly,  as  you  cannot  say 


134  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

that  men,  as  a  body,  are  courteous  or 
uncouth.  Some  newspapers  are  unmis 
takably  vulgar,  like  some  people.  They 
are  not  so  of  themselves,  however ;  they 
are  made  vulgar  by  vulgar  people. 
There  are  very  able  newspapers  which 
have  very  bad  manners,  and  some  which 
have  no  other  distinction  than  good 
manners.  A  very  dull  man  may  be  very 
urbane,  and  so  may  a  very  dull  newspa 
per.  On  the  other  hand,  a  newspaper 
which  is  both  brilliant  and  clever  may 
be  sometimes  guilty  of  an  injustice,  a 
deliberate  and  persistent  misrepresenta 
tion,  to  attain  a  particular  end — conduct 
which  is  sometimes  called  "  journalistic." 
But  the  person  who  is  responsible  for 
the  performance,  for  similar  conduct 
would  be  metaphorically  kicked  out  of 
a  club.  But  gentlemen  are  not  kicked 
out  of  clubs. 

A  newspaper  gains  neither  character 


Newspaper  Ethics  135 

nor  influence  by  abandoning  good  man 
ners.  It  may  indeed  make  itself  disa 
greeable  and  annoying,  and  so  silence 
opposition,  as  a  polecat  may  effectually 
close  the  wood  path  which  you  had  de 
signed  to  take.  It  may  be  feared,  and 
in  the  same  way  as  that  animal — feared 
and  despised.  But  this  effect  must  not 
be  confounded  with  newspaper  power 
and  influence.  It  is  exceedingly  annoy 
ing,  undoubtedly,  to  be  placarded  all 
over  town  as  a  liar  or  a  donkey,  a  hypo 
crite  or  a  sneak-thief.  But  although  the 
effect  is  most  unpleasant,  very  little 
ability  is  required  to  produce  it.  A  lit 
tle  paper  and  printing,  a  little  paste,  a 
great  deal  of  malice,  and  a  host  of  bill- 
stickers  are  all  that  are  needed,  and  even 
the  pecuniary  cost  is  not  large.  The 
effect  is  produced,  but  it  does  not  show 
ability  or  force  or  influence  upon  the 
part  of  its  producer. 


136  Ars  Recte  Vivendi 

The  manners  of  newspapers,  as  such, 
cannot  be  classified  any  more  than  the 
manners  of  legislatures,  or  of  the  profes 
sions  or  trades.  This,  however,  seems 
to  be  true,  that  a  well-mannered  man 
will  not  produce  an  ill-mannered  news 
paper. 

(April,  1891) 


THE  END 


HARPER'S   AMERICAN  ESSAYISTS 


OTHER  TIMES  AND  OTHER  SEASONS.     By  LAU 
RENCE  HUTTON. 

A  LITTLE  ENGLISH  GALLERY.     By  LOUISE  IMO 
GEN  GUINEY. 

LITERARY     AND     SOCIAL     SILHOUETTES.      By 

HJALMAR  HJORTH  BOYESEN. 
STUDIES  OF  THE  STAGE.   By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 

AMERICANISMS  AND   BRITICISMS,  with  Other  Es 
says  OLL  Other  Isms.     By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 

AS  WE   GO.     By  CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER.     With 
Illustrations. 

AS    WE     WERE     SAYING.      By  CHARLES  DUDLEY 

WARNER.     With  Illustrations. 
FROM   THE    EASY    CHAIR.     By  GEORGE  WILLIAM 

CURTIS. 

FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  Second  Series.  By  GEORGE 

WILLIAM  CURTIS. 
FROM  THE  EASY  CHAIR.  Third  Series.  By  GEORGE 

WILLIAM  CURTIS. 
CRITICISM  AND  FICTION.  By  WILLIAM  DEAN 

HOWELLS. 

FROM  THE  BOOKS  OF  LAURENCE  HUTTON. 
CONCERNING  ALL  OF  US.   By  THOMAS  WENT- 

WORTH   HlGGINSON. 

THE    WORK    OF    JOHN    RUSKIN.      By  CHARLES 
WALDSTEIN. 

PICTURE   AND  TEXT.      By  HENRY  JAMES.      With 
Illustrations. 

16rno,  Cloth,  $1  CO  each.     Complete  Sets,  in  White  and  Gold, 
$1  25  a  Volume. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER   &   BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

E3?~r/ie  above  works  are  for  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  mailed  by 
the  publishers,  postage  prepaid,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


HARPER'S   CONTEMPORARY  ESSAYISTS 


THE  PERSONAL  EQUATION.     By  HARRY  THURS- 
TON  PECK. 

CERTAIN  ACCEPTED  HEROES,  and  Other  Essays  in 
Literature  and  Politics.     By  HENRY  CABOT  LODGE. 

HOW  TO  TELL  A  STORY,  and  Other  Essays.     By 
MARK  TWAIN. 

It  is  difficult  to  suggest  a  volume  more  likely  to  furnish 
entertainment  than  this  splendid  collection  of  sketches  by  a 
wellnigh  inimitable  author. — New  Orleans  States. 

BOOK  AND  HEART.     Essays  on  Literature  and  Life. 
By  THOMAS  WENTWORTH  HIGGINSON. 

There  is  in  this  volume  a  most  engaging  mixture  of  learn 
ing,  anecdote,  and  opinion,  and  the  time  spent  over  its  pages  is 
well  spent. — Brooklyn  Eagle. 

THE  RELATION  OF  LITERATURE  TO  LIFE.    By 

CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER. 

Thoughtful,  scholarly,  and  witty  discourses,  in  a  form  con 
venient  for  reference. — Springfield  Republican. 

IMPRESSIONS    AND   EXPERIENCES.     By  W.  D. 

HOWELLS. 

We  fail  to  see  how  any  one  who  loves  to  spend  the  leisure 
moments  of  the  day  in  the  company  of  a  strong  and  original 
mind  can  help  submitting  to  the  charm  of  these  essays. — Ex 
aminer,  N.  Y. 

ASPECTS  OF  FICTION,  and  Other  Ventures  in  Criti 
cism.    By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS. 
Full  of  sound,  entertaining,  and  illuminating  criticism. — 

Advance,  Chicago. 

Post  8vo,  Cloth,  Ornamental,  Uncut  Edges  and  Gilt  Tops, 
$1  50  each. 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON  : 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  PUBLISHERS 

J3^"  The  above  works  are  for  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  sent  by 
mail  by  the  publithers,  postage  prepaid,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


RETURN    CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

TO—  ^    202  Main  Library 

LOAN  PERIOD  1 
HOME  USE 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

ALL  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due  date. 

Books  may  be  Renewed  by  calling        642-3405 


DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 

44-A-V     A-Q   4f\nt* 

MAY  GO  1995 

2, 

95 

FORM  NO.  DD6 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


BJ 


